The Majority Leader, Mahama Ayariga, has asked the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) to fill the Party’s running-mate position with a female candidate to demonstrate its commitment to gender empowerment.
Mr Ayariga, also the Member of Parliament for Bawku Central, said the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) had already shown the way by appointing Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang as its running-mate and subsequently elected as Ghana’s first female Vice President, a historic feat in Ghanaian politics.
“We, the NDC, can only go forward…,” he said amid cheers on the floor of Parliament on Tuesday when responding to the Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin’s comments that President Mahama was not committed to gender equity.
Mr Ayariga dismissed some allegations made by the Minority Leader to the effect that only few women were appointed into ministerial positions in the Mahama-led Government.
The Majority Leader asked the NPP to allow female candidates to go unopposed in constituencies considered “safe seats” in their strongholds, especially in the Ashanti region, whilst the NDC does the same in the Volta region.
In that way, he believed, there would be sufficient women legislators in Parliament to enable the President to choose his ministers from at any point in time.
“Now, the Minority Leader has suddenly become a gender champion when as a Majority Leader in government, he could not protect his female MPs’ seats in the last elections and lost most of them….dzi wo fie asem” (focus on your internal issues), he said, triggering another lighthearted cheers from both sides of the house.
Early on, the Minority Leader, Afenyo-Markin, had stated that President Mahama had failed to fulfill his election promise to appoint 30 per cent of females into his Cabinet.
“We have women MPs in the majority side of the House who have the requisite credentials to be ministers but they have been relegated to the background,” Mr Afenyo-Markin stated.
The MP for Effutu alleged that only 28 women were appointed by the President as mayors and Chief Executives of the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies.
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