By Kwabia Owusu-Mensah/Yussif Ibrahim
Kumasi, Dec. 10, GNA – For the first time after the Rawlings era, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has garnered more than 30 per cent of valid votes cast in the Ashanti Region.
This feat has contributed to NDC’s landslide victory in the 2024 election.
The late former President John Jerry Rawlings was the only NDC presidential candidate who had secured more than 30 per cent of votes in the Ashanti region in the history of the party.
In 1992 and 1996, the NDC led by President Rawlings, secured 32.9 and 32.8 per cent respectively, as it cruised to victory in those elections decisively.
Since then, the party had struggled to replicate that performance after the exit of their charismatic leader, with their best performance in the region being 28.4 per cent, which was achieved in 2012.
The party has, however, made massive inroads in the region in the 2024 elections after polling 697,076 votes representing 33 per cent of the 2,106,108 valid votes cast, contributing to an emphatic victory for the umbrella family.
The NDC has for the first time, also won four more seats in the Ashanti region.
They are the Ahafo Ano South East, Obuasi East, Akrofuom and Adansi Asokwa.
This brings to eight the parliamentary seats the party is holding in the region.
The existing parliamentary seats for the NDC in the Ashanti region are, Asawase, New Edubiase, Ejura-Sekyeredumase and Sekyere Afram Plains.
The party is also claiming two more seats yet to be declared by the Electoral Commission (EC) due to the destruction of pink sheets following clashes between the opposing supporters who believe their candidates won the election.
The Ashanti region, which is traditionally a stronghold of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) has kept faith with the party over the years, playing significant role in its electoral fortunes.
It was therefore the expectation of many election watchers that the region would play a crucial role in the NPP’s quest to break the eight- year cycle of governance by the two leading parties ahead of the election.
But this year’s results from the region have been rather disappointing, diminishing any chance of the party sealing a historic victory as it sought to achieve.
For the first time in 28 years, the NDC has won constituencies it had never won in the region, summing up the poor performance of the ruling party in its most reliable stronghold.
Since the NPP started competing in parliamentary elections in 1996 under the Fourth Republic, it had limited the NDC to only three seats in the region over the years – Asawase, Ejura, and New Edubiase.
The creation of the Sekyere Afram Plains Constituency in 2012, however, increased the NDC’s parliamentary seats to four and remained so until this year’s election.
The NPP even snatched the New Edubiase and Ejura seats from the NDC in 2016 but they both returned to the fold of the NDC in 2020.
As election results from polling stations across the constituencies in the region started trickling in, it became clear the NPP was on its way to opposition because its previous victories largely depended on the results in the Ashanti region.
Also compounding the woes of the party was the low turnout in the region, which was 64.8 per cent, far below the 82.9 per cent recorded for the region in 2020.
The NPP during the 2024 electioneering campaigns, targeted to obtain between 75 and 85 percent of the 3,019,178 votes, which were expected to be cast in the region for the presidential elections.
However, at the end of the polls, the party was able to obtain 1,366,800, representing 63.96 percent of the 2,106,108 total valid votes cast in the region.
The NDC on the other hand, obtained 697,076, representing 32.96 percent of the valid votes cast.
The NPP in the 2020 elections, obtained 1,795,824, out of the total 2,466,856 valid votes cast, while NDC secured 653,149 votes in that election.
Voter apathy, which according to some election watchers in the region, has become endemic in the stronghold of the NPP, is now an albatross hanging on the neck of the party, placing its electoral fortunes in total jeopardy.
GNA