Former Chairperson of the Electoral Commission Charlotte Osei has said that Ghana is ready for a female president.
The private legal practitioner argued that “after watching the men, I think Ghana needs a female president.”
She was speaking on the special Joy FM Super Morning Show Monday in honour of International Women’s Day which was commemorated across the globe on Sunday.
TV personality and Ag. MD of GHOne TV, Nana Aba Anamoah who was also on the show echoed the words of Mrs Osei.
According to the TV anchor, “We have been ready for a long time [for a female president] and it’s not just Ghana.”
Both women also bemoaned the fact that the two biggest political parties in Ghana have never fielded a female candidate or running mate.
There were rumours that President Nana Akufo-Addo in 2008 considered naming Alima Mahama as running mate but was reportedly prevailed upon by party functionaries to abandon the idea.
In 2012, former first lady, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings lost woefully in her attempt to challenge then-President John Atta Mills as a candidate for the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
Mills, who died in office was replaced by his Vice, John Mahama who was kept as the party’s candidate with Kwesi Amissah-Arthur as running mate.
Since then, Mrs Agyeman-Rawlings has stood as a candidate for her spinoff party, National Democratic Party (NDP) but garnered less than 1% of the total votes in the 2012 general elections.
She was disqualified from contesting in 2016 alongside Ghana Freedom Party founder Akua Donkor.
In developed democracies, it is not so much better.
In the UK, there has been only two female Prime Ministers, Margaret Thatcher and most recently, Theresa May.
In the US, which prides itself as the epitome of democracy, the closest it came to getting a female leader was in 2016 when Hilary Clinton lost to President Donald Trump in the general elections.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren just dropped out of the Democratic primaries, killing the chance of a female US President in 2021.
I know that we will one day elect a woman to the White House. pic.twitter.com/logAh3YEFC
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) March 6, 2020
Speaking on the prospects of a female POTUS, the Democrat said, “We’ll know we can have a woman in the White House when we finally elect a woman to the White House.
