PROF GYAN BAFFOUR RETAINED UNOPPOSED (PAGE 17)

Story: Samuel Duodu, Wenchi

A Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Prof. George Gyan Baffour, has been retained as the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Parliamentary candidate for the Wenchi Constituency in the Brong Ahafo Region.
Prof. Gyan Baffour who is also the sitting NPP Member of Parliament (MP) for Wenchi was declared unopposed by Mr Samuel Kwaah, the Wenchi Municipal Director of the Electoral Commission (EC), at the constituency delegate conference held at Wenchi last weekend.
According to Mr Kwaah, Prof Gyan Baffour was the only person who had filed his nomination to contest the Wenchi Parliamentary seat on the NPP ticket as of the close of nomination, and therefore he had to be declared unopposed.
Prof. Gyan Baffour is therefore the first sitting MP of the NPP in the country to be elected by popular acclamation.
Addressing the delegates conference earlier, Mr Kwasi Adu Gyan, the Brong Ahafo Regional Chairman of the NPP, said that the party, right from the national to the polling station level had put in place effective and vigorous campaign strategies to increase its parliamentary seats from 128 to about 200 in this year’s election.
He stated that the party had therefore increased the polling station executive from five to 15 to embark on a vigorous door to door campaign to ensure that the party retained power and increased its representation in parliament.
Mr Adu Gyan therefore urged the party’s polling station executives to close their ranks and eschew all divisive tendencies and work hard to retain power as well as ensure that the party’s parliamentary candidates won.
He said the Busia-Danquah Tradition had its roots from Wenchi because of the late Dr Kofi Abrefa Busia, the Prime Minister of the Second Republic who hails from there, and therefore called on members of the party to ensure that the party recorded a higher margin in both the presidential and the parliamentary polls.
Prof. Gyan Baffour in his remarks thanked the constituency and polling station executives for the confidence they had reposed in him by retaining him as the parliamentary candidate and pledged to work with all to ensure another victory in the December election.
He stated that the national election in the constituency was not about the NPP and the NDC but was about development and non-development as well as the modernity of Wenchi, saying that the NPP within its seven and a half years of rule, and as the MP for the area, had brought massive development to the area to restore Wenchi to its past glory as one of the major towns in the Brong Ahafo Region.
Prof. Gyan Baffour, therefore urged the electorate to vote for him and the flag bearer of the NPP, Nana Akufo-Addo, to continue with the development of Wenchi and the country as a whole.
He pledged that when elected he would collaborate with his colleague MPs along the northern corridors of the country to lobby for the construction of the Wenchi-Bole-Bambio–Wa-Hamile road , adding that the construction of the road would make Wenchi the gateway to the north-western part of the country.
Dr Gyan Baffour also added that he would also ensure the reconstruction of the Wenchi-Techiman road to further enhance commercial activities in the town.