Francisca Oteng Mensah Beats Napo, Majority Leader As Best NPP MP In Ashanti Region

The Member of Parliament (MP) for Kwabre East, Hon. Francisca Oteng Mensah has been named the best performing MP of the New Patriotic Party in the Ashanti Region.

This was captured in a research conducted by the Center for Progressive Governance (CenProG) ahead of the parliamentary primaries of the ruling government on April 25.

The exercise covered all the 44 constituencies in the Ashanti region, 1 of which was/is an NDC stronghold (New Edubiase) and another which is a swing seat (Ahafo Ano North).

At the end of the research, the Data accumulated confirmed that Hon. Francisca Oteng Mensah stands tall amongst all the other NPP MP’s in the region.

In an Executive Summary from CenProG released and signed by its Executive Secretary Sawadogo Mahmoud, it said: “The youngest legislator in the parliament of Ghana, Hon. Francisca Oteng Mensah is the most liked NPP MP in the Ashanti region. Respondents cite charisma, eloquence, attractiveness to floating voters and integrity as the qualities they look for in a Member of Parliament."

The report continued, “Out of respondents in the Kwabre East constituency who said they were NPP members, 96% named her as the candidate with the qualities they wanted in an MP. 89% said there were satisfied with her performances; out of with 90% indicated there were very satisfied. 92% of the floating voters named her as the candidate with the qualities they want in an MP, 87% were satisfied with her performance; out of which 88% said they were very satisfied”.

Hon. Hon. Francisca Oteng Mensah scored a rating of 94% beating Hon. Mathew Opoku Prempeh (Manhyia South) and Hon. Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu (Suame).

Hon. Joyce Adwoa Akoh Dei (Bosome Freho), as well as Hon. Collins Owusu Amankwah, (Manhya North) bounced onto the list of top 5 NPP performing MP’s in the Region.

About CenProG:

Center for Progressive Governance (CenProG) is a governance research and social advocacy group based in Ghana.

Over the last couple of years, we have contributed to critical national issues especially in the area of our good governance with analysis on both the government and the opposition parties.

Data collection for the research:

Our volunteers visited all 44 constituencies in the Ashanti region which have MPs from the New Patriotic Party: 1 of which was/is an NDC stronghold (New Edubiase) and another that is a swing seat (Ahafo Ano North).

We agreed before the commencement of the project that due to limited time and resources, the constituencies were zoned into 6 based on their geographical location which are the Kumasi Metro Zone, The Ahafo Ano Zone, The Adansi Zone, The Asante Akyim Zone, The Nwabiagya/Mponua Zone and the Afigya/Sekyere/Kwabre Zone. Apart from the Kumasi Metro Zone where we spent 3 days, a minimum of 5 days was spent in each zone.

We agreed that since most of the constituencies in the region had more than 100 polling stations, it would serve our purpose if we chose an equal number of respondents from each constituency. To also give a fair representation, we interviewed 120 party members and 80 people who said they had no political party affiliations (floating voters). About 80% of the party members we interacted with said they either belonged to a branch or were branch executives. We did not interview any constituency or regional executive for this survey. In all, we interviewed 8800 people:

4840 female and 3960 male respondents.

Respondents were among other things asked what factors would influence their choice of Member of Parliament. They were also asked if they were satisfied with the performance of their Member of Parliament in terms of : [1] Incorruptible [2] Response to the party grassroots [3] Relationship with constituents [4] Regard for the party structures [5] Effective communication [6] Development projects. And if they were satisfied, how satisfied were they with the performance of their MP.

Respondents were also asked which qualities they wanted in an MP and to name the person they think possess those qualities. Respondents who said they had no allegiance to any political party were asked if they had ever voted for an NPP Presidential candidate whiles voting for a Parliamentary candidate from another party or vice versa.