Hajia Zainab Mahama succeeds Anita de Sosoo
Fifty-two-year old Hajia Zainab Mahama has succeeded Anita de Sosoo as the National Women's Organiser of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
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This was after delegates of the party’s women's conference in Wa on Saturday handed her 52 per cent of the votes in a three-candidate contest.
Hajia Zainab, a teacher by profession and until then an incumbent National Deputy Women's Organiser of the party, beat her fellow former Deputy Women's Organiser, Madam Margaret Chiravira, and new entrant Madam Mariam Sinare in what she called a "good and healthy competition."
She polled 304 votes, while Madam Sinare and Chiravira polled 178 and 78, respectively.
Two others —Dr Catherine Denyu and Hajia Fati Usman — were elected as deputy women's organisers from a list of 10 candidates.
"This victory is for the whole of the NDC," she said to cheering delegates shortly before the elected three were sworn in by the party's General Secretary, Mr Johnson Asiedu Nketiah. "I will count on the support of each one of you to succeed," she added.
Speaking on behalf of losing candidates at the conference, Madam Chiravira pledged support for the newly-elected women's leadership of the party, stressing that they required the support of everyone to carry on from where Anita de Sosoo's team had reached.
The polls had been largely peaceful, with no traits of the acrimony that had become synonymous with political elections in Ghana.
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The candidates, Zainab, Mariam and Margaret seated in the front row, appeared to ease the tension by engaging in little chats at the start of an event which dragged on into the afternoon, as organisers waited on Vice President Paa Kwesi Amisah Arthur to grace the occasion.
The Vice President, whose primary function in Wa had been his participation in the second congregation of the Wa campus of the University for Development Studies, duly arrived—with the Second Lady — to wild cheers that charged the atmosphere .