The Member of Parliament for Assin North, Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, has said the NPP's defeat in the recent Asawase bye-election attest to the fact that the NPP government has lost its popularity with the people.

Kennedy Ohene Agyapong who phoned in to a morning show programme blamed the abysmal performance of the NPP on certain policies and programms which were undertaken by the government in the beginning of the year. He mentioned some of the policies as the recent decongestion exercise undertaken in some parts of the country and the fuel price increases, which have brought untold hardships to Ghanaians.

Mr. Agyapong said he cannot understand the ruthless manner the decongestion exercise was carried out as measures were not put in place to relocate the traders who, according to him, voted for the NPP and President Kufuor in the December 2004 general elections. He said during the decongestion exercise, many traders and market women had their goods and properties destroyed and thieves also took advantage of their situation to steal their wares as a result of which they lost huge sums of monies.

How can you treat people like 'animals' and expect them to forget and vote for you. It can never happen. Mr. Agyepong called on the leadership of the NPP to listen to the masses and reject any policy by government which can make the party unattractive and unpopular to Ghanaians so as to build the confidence Ghanaians had in the Kufuor-led NPP.