Member of Parliament (MP) for Ablekuma West, Ursula Owusu Ekuful, has defended a proposal of the National Executive Council (NEC) of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to have only females contest the 16 sitting women MPs.
The proposal reached on Monday, March 23, has been met with protests from certain quarters of the party’s membership with the reason that some of the female MPs are not hardworking.
Dissentients to the proposal also claim some female MPs have lost touch with constituents by not visiting often.
Mrs Ekuful was cited.
“Our MP doesn’t do the work at all. She doesn’t go to funerals. She doesn’t go to outdoorings. She doesn’t do anything. When we are doing clean-up exercise, she doesn’t come at all,” one constituent of Ablekuma West NPP told TV3’s Sangmorkie Tetteh at the party’s head office on Tuesday.
But speaking on TV3’s Midday Live on Wednesday, March 25, Mrs Ekuful says her familiarity with the constituents goes to the extent of attending three funerals on a Saturday and visiting half a dozen of churches on Sundays.
“I do six churches most weekends in my constituency,” she told TV3’s Bridget Otoo. “I don’t know where they were expecting to see me that they didn’t see me.
“I have been everywhere,” she replied her critics.
On the proposal, she said the NEC of NPP should be lauded for such a move as more women are needed at higher positions the world over.
“These are positive discrimination, affirmative action measures lauded the world over to address issues of inequality, unequal representation, marginalisation and exclusion.”
She argued that the few women MPs in Ghana casts a dark picture on the country’s status as a matured democracy in Africa.
“We have done advocacy, public education and sensitization. Nothing seems to have worked and female representation hovers around 10 per cent.”
Mrs Ekuful accused those opposing the proposal as those who do not want to see women in public life.
“Women-only shortlists are applied across the world,” she said, citing the Labour Party in the United Kingdom as an ideal example.
“We should not allow them to drown out the voices of the silent majority who are rooting for more women because they have seen the benefits they have derived from the work of women at all levels.”
