Pius Hadzide to slug it out with Paul Ansah Asare for NDC’s Asuogyaman seat

Chief Executive of the National Youth Authority, Pius Enam Hadzide is eyeing the Asuogyaman Constituency parliamentary seat come next year when the NPP opens up for contest, MyNewsGh.com has confirmed from reliable sources familiar with the constituency.

The former Deputy Information and Youth and Sports Minister has been making strategic overtures to key stakeholders in the constituency ahead of the NPP’s internal primaries while preparing the ground for what promises to be a keen contest between Mr. Hadzide and Mr Paul Asare Ansah, who is a former Director-General of the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GHPA) and now Technical Adviser to the Ministry of Transport.

Although there is a Primary to contest, Mr. Hadzide has already been fighting the incumbent MP for incompetence after Hadzide supported some fire victims at New Powmu in the Asuogyaman District of the Eastern Region.

Pius Enam Hadzide explained that, he returned from his official trip to the United Kingdom to the sad news of a fire disaster that ravaged shops of some traders and artisans at New Powmu with the NDC MP for the area silent.

Contentious Primary

In the 2019 NPP primary, Paul Asare Ansah polled 539 votes to win the Asuogyaman Constituency Parliamentary Primaries. His closest contender, one Kwame Adu Darkwa polled 131 votes.

Paul Asare Ansah later lost the main 2020 elections to Thomas Ampem Nyarko, the incumbent MP for the Constituency and a former District Chief Executive.

Mr Ampem Nyarko, by his re-election, became the first MP in the Asuogyaman Constituency to be re-elected for a second consecutive term since the inception of the Fourth Republic in 1992.

He polled 24,439 votes to beat Paul Asare who bagged 23,201 votes in the tight contest.

The total number of votes cast were 47, 640 out of the expected 48,073 on the register. There were 433 rejected ballots.

In the Presidential Election, Incumbent President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo of the NPP obtained 22,232 votes, while Former President John Mahama of the NDC polled 24,470 of the valid ballots cast. The Ghana Union Movement’s candidate got 22.