The National Democratic Congress (NDC) will be presenting 42 females as parliamentary candidates in the 2016 general election.
At the party’s Presidential and Parliamentary primaries, which took place last Saturday, 42 females emerged victorious out of the 75 females who contested the primaries.
So far, the NDC has elected 269 candidates for the 2016 elections.
The primaries were hotly contested by 728 aspirants, including the 75 female aspirants.
The party is yet to elect candidates for the Bunkrugu, Chiana Paga, Nkwanta South, Akwatia, Ketu South and North Tongu.
It is waiting for the decision of the court to conduct the remaining six primaries.
Post primaries
At a post-primaries briefing at the party’s headquarters in Accra yesterday, the General Secretary, Mr. Johnson Asiedu Nketia, said the number of successful female candidates were more than 50 per cent of the total number of female aspirants. According to Mr Nketia, the party hailed it as a success story for the affirmative action of the party.
The affirmative action of the party is aimed at allocating 40 per cent of leadership positions to qualified women.
Break down
The breakdown of female candidates by regions are as follows: Western, three female aspirants out of which two won; Central had nine aspirants and six won; Volta presented 14 females and seven made it; Greater Accra had 13 contesting with nine winning; Eastern nine with seven winning; Ashanti Region had 13 with eight making it; Brong Ahafo had four females and two won; Northern Region had three females contesting but all failed to win.
The Upper East and West regions presented three and four female aspirants respectively and each region had one female sailing through.
Press conference
Mr Asiedu Nketia said the affirmative action of the party was not a privilege reserved for women but was their right.
He said out of the total number of 58 Municipal and Metropolitan and District Chief Executives who contested, 37 of them won to contest the 2016 parliamentary elections on the ticket of the party.
Mr Asiedu Nketia said the party would by the end of the year conduct the last batch of six parliamentary primaries, announce the party’s running mate and launch its 2016 manifesto.
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