If coming events really cast their shadows, then the Member of Parliament for Tema West, Irene Naa Torshie Addo, must be getting worrying signs as she prepares to renew her mandate with the electorate of her constituency for the 2016 elections.
In an apparent test of her popularity last Saturday, the MP, for the first time since taking office some seven years ago, called for “an emergency meeting” of residents of Sakumono to discuss challenges facing the community, but the meeting was greeted with apathy and indifference by the residents.
In all, only some 40 people of the over 5,000 residents turned up for the meeting.
Indeed, the writing appeared to have been on the wall some 24 hours before the event when a vehicle, mandated by the MP, drove around the community to announce the details of the said meeting.
Some of the residents came out of their houses and confronted the driver of the van with a lot of questions: Where has Naa Torshie been all this while? Why has she not met her constituents for the past seven years? Why she waited till almost one year to another election before initiating this move? What has she done for this community in her seven years as MP? What has become of her ongoing hospital project which she made so much noise about just before the 2012 elections? What has used her MPs’ Common Fund for?
In a rather sarcastic tone, another resident said: “Didn’t they say the Tema West seat will now be for indigenous Gas? Let her have the meeting with indigenous Gas and get the same indigenous Gas to vote for her in the next election. What does she want from us?”
Not surprisingly, when the hour of the meeting finally dawned, not only were most of the chairs empty but the key figures in the community were also all absent.
In a bid to whip up more interest in the event, the announcement van made many more trips into the community to remind residents of the meeting but all to no avail.
What further worsened matters was that the youth of the area were playing football very close to the venue of the meeting, giving the few people who were at the event a lot of divided attention.
Matters discussed at the meeting included security in the area and the deteriorating road network, but no conclusive decisions were taken.
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