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Politics of Thursday, 11 February 2010

Source: The Catalyst

Disgraceful NPP Faces Frunt Of Women

New Patriotic Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Evalue-Edwira constituency, Mrs Catherine Afeku, has been described as a disgrace to Ghanaian women. She has been referred to as a fraudster who has no moral authority to caution the women of this country on anything whatsoever. This has been the position of some women who called The Catalyst on phone to register their revulsion at the unguarded statement the New Patriotic Party (NPP) MP made on the floor of Parliament last Tuesday.
In contributing to a debate on the floor about the sterling performance of the senior national team, the Black Stars, at the just ended CAF Championships in Angola where the team placed second behind Egypt, the NPP MP made a derogatory statement about the women who were among the supporters on the return trip to Angola on Sunday to cheer the team up in the final match.
The NPP MP described as 'handbags' and 'comforters' her fellow women on the return trip, some of whom she said went to Angola not to support the Ghanaian team but to render 'some other services,' connoting sexual promiscuity.
This has angered not only the women who were on the trip but the generality of Ghanaian women, except a handful who for political solidarity have been defending the dishonourable statement by the NPP MP on the floor of Parliament to mean something else.
What has made the women even more angry was a futile attempt by Mrs Catherine Afeku to do damage control by claiming that she was only trying to caution the women of Ghana against being used as sexual objects on such trips. This, the women deem to be an insult to their intelligence.
The women said the Evalue-Edwira MP, who they described as a fraudster based on a court ruling against her as having engaged in fraud sometime ago which is why some have said that she should have been in jail instead of being an MP, possibly is guilty of being 'a handbag' and 'comforter' to men behind her husband, which is why she was hallucinating that some of the women on last Sunday's return trip to Angola were her kind.
The NPP had put up an indifferent attitude towards Ghana's participation in the tournament in Angola with some NPP MPs like Isaac Asiamah and Balado Manu scoffing at the government on the floor of Parliament.
Taking a cue from her male colleagues in Parliament, Mrs Catherine Afeku decided to go on the same tangent of denigrating the government and organisers of the supporters' return trip to Angola but ended up shooting her own mouth in the process.
The women said it beats their imagination as to why an honourable MP would disregard the beauty of President John Evans Atta Mills' 'Better Ghana' agenda, which made it mandatory for the organisers of the trip to Angola to include people from all political parties and civil society and religious organisations in the country, a feat that is unprecedented in the history of Ghana and a total departure from the 'winner takes it all' policy of the Kufuor-led NPP government, which gave such opportunities to only NPP followers.
They postulated that the ungrateful posture of Mrs Catherine Afeku and her ilk should be condemned by all right thinking people of Ghana, adding that President Mills and the NDC government deserve praise for the progressive way in which they are ruling the country that has manifested in the Angola trip rather than the senseless attacks on them by people like fraud infested Mrs Catherine Afeku.
Mrs Catherine Afeku's unguarded statement has angered the whole nation, especially women who are up in arms demanding an unqualified public apology from the NPP MP. Some have threatened that they will march to Parliament to demand that the loudmouth NPP MP apologises to all Ghanaian women publicly if she fails t