I had no motivation to vote against Prof Oquaye – MP Adwoa Safo
The Member of Parliament (MP) for Dome Kwabenya, Sarah Adwoa Safo has denied rumours that she voted against the New Patriotic Party (NPP) nominee for the position of Speaker during the last sitting of the 7th Parliament.
In a statement issued across her social media profiles, the former Deputy Majority Leader of the Seventh Parliament said she found the “vile rumours” absurd and urged the general public to disregard them.
It will be recalled that the NPP nominee and Speaker of the Seventh Parliament Professor Aaron Mike Oquaye lost the elections for the Speaker of the Eighth Parliament to the National Democratic Congress nominee Alban Kingsford Sumani Bagbin on January 7.
With the 275 parliamentary seats split almost evenly between the NDC and NPP with 137 seats each and one independent candidate, Bagbin won with 138 votes while Oquaye polled 136 votes, fuelling speculation that some NPP MP’s voted against the party’s nominee.
Mrs Safo has been named among the suspects by some social media users but she insists she had no motivation to vote against the NPP nominee.
“It is being alleged that I voted against Prof Oquaye because he [Prof Oquaye] allowed his son to contest me in the recent past Dome Kwabenya parliamentary primaries of the NPP in the run up to the 2020 general elections. How absurd!,” the statement said.
“I wish to state emphatically that, there is no iota of truth in these vile rumours and speculations, and I call on all and sundry to completely disregard same. For the avoidance of doubt, I wish to state without any shred of doubt that, I, Sarah Adwoa Safo, voted for Prof Mike Oquaye.
“I had absolutely no motivation to vote otherwise. In the over 20 years of my active political life, I have always stood for and publicly supported decisions of my party, the NPP. My unquenchable loyalty and commitment to the NPP over decades can certainly not be shaken by an ordinary internal contest within the party. At every stage of my parliamentary political life, I have been contested, and at no point have I begrudged my fellow contestants”.
She also stated that she was the only female Member of Parliament who spoke in support of the party’s nominee in Parliament before the election.
|Graphic Online
