CPP eyes 5 parliamentary seats in Western Region

Ahead of this year’s elections, the Convention People’s Party (CPP) has predicted victory in five out of the 26 parliamentary seats in the Western Region, as the party is convinced it has properly positioned itself for the contest.

But the party would not divulge which of the five seats it was going to wrestle, except with the clue that they were all traditional seats.

Currently, the CPP has no parliamentary seat in the region – the home of its founder, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.

It could not even boast of maintaining its seat in the hometown of the Founder, Nkroful, which was carved out of the Ellembelle Constituency.

The Regional Chairman of the CPP, Mr. Kwabena Tumi, told The Chronicle he was going to spring a surprise in his capacity as a strategist, to rewrite CPP history, with regard to winning parliamentary seats.

Political observers believe the CPP would not make any impact in the coming elections, following the disunity at the top hierarchy, coupled with the absence of resources to engage in major political campaigning.

Speaking in a telephone interview with The Chronicle, however, the Regional Chairman would not agree with this claim. He described it as a ‘paper’ claim, which ran contrary to what pertained on the ground.

Mr. Tumi expressed the belief that the CPP was rather poised and hungry for political success this time round. “Don’t forget it was during my reign as Regional Organiser that the CPP had three parliamentary seats. And now as Regional Chairman, I am going to set a record, come the November 7 elections, where we are wresting five parliamentary seats,” he stressed.

Defending why the party had decided to wrest none other than traditional parliamentary seats for the beginning, Mr. Tumi explained it was due to the party’s leverage in those constituencies, which was the result of responses from voters in those areas.

Asked to mention the five parliamentary seats his party was set to wrest, Kwabena Tumi declined. He rather asked rhetorically: “Do you want me to put my strategy outside there, when you know the CPP is in political competition with other parties?”

The CPP had held on to the Jomoro, Ellembelle and Nzema East constituency seats until the 2008 and 2012 elections when it lost out to the ruling party.

The Jomoro parliamentary seat, for instance, was snatched from Mr. Lee Ocran in 2008 by Samia Nkrumah, daughter of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. In 2012, she lost the seat to the NDC.