Charles Opoku Wins NPP Assin North Primaries

Charles Opoku has been elected as the NPP parliamentary candidate to represent the people of Assin North in the upcoming by-election.

He secured an impressive 397 votes out of the total valid votes cast, while his closest competitor, Freeman Amoah-Kyei, garnered 136 votes.

As the elected candidate, Opoku will face off against candidates from other political parties, including the National Democratic Congress (NDC) James Gyakye Quayson.

The Assin North seat became vacant following a landmark ruling by a seven-member Supreme Court panel on May 17, 2023.

The panel, chaired by Justices Jones Dotse,  unanimously declared the election and subsequent swearing-in of the previous MP, James Gyakye Quayson, as unconstitutional, null, void, and of no effect.

The apex court found that Quayson was ineligible to contest for the position of Member of Parliament during the 2020 presidential and parliamentary elections.

The court determined that Quayson had not fulfilled the qualification requirements at the time of filing his nomination forms between October 5 and 9, 2020.

Earlier, the opposition NDC accused the ruling NPP and the Electoral Commission of plotting to insert the name of an unqualified candidate into the voters’ register for the Assin North constituency.

In a statement, the NDCs Communication Officer Sammy Gyamfi claimed that the ruling party, in collaboration with the EC, plans to transfer and insert Charles Opoku’s name into the voters’ register, despite him not being a registered voter in the Assin North constituency.

Mr Gyamfi emphasized that the nomination form for the Assin North by-election requires candidates to be registered voters in that constituency.

But the EC dismissed allegations of inserting illegal names in the voters’ register.