CPP committed to offering leadership roles to women—Evelyn Anabila

The National Organiser of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), Ms Evelyn Anabila, has described the CPP as the only political party that is committed to offering more women opportunities to be in leadership positions.
She said the party did not only pay lip-service to offering chances for women to realise their political potential, but had backed such pledges with concrete actions that included amending its constitution to allow women to be appointed to all leadership positions.
Ms Anabila, therefore, urged other political parties and institutions to refrain from the rhetoric about women’s participation and ensure that there were rules and regulations that were targeted at increasing the number of women in leadership positions.
Ms Anabila, who is the only female national organiser of a political party in the country, said the CPP had since independence proven beyond doubt that it was committed to the cause of offering women the necessary platform to actively participate in the democratic process and voted for a female as its current National Organiser.
She explained that the CPP Central Committee at its recent meeting directed its constitution review committee to ensure that the amended constitution made provision for more women to take up national positions and include clauses that made it mandatory for the party to appoint at least one woman each as a deputy for all national executive positions after the general conference.
Ms Anabila recalled the concrete affirmative steps by Dr Kwame Nkrumah during the First Republic to ensure that more Ghanaian women were given the opportunity to participate in political activities to the highest level, which was amply demonstrated when he appointed 10 women from the various regions as Members of Parliament (MPs).
She said the enormous contribution and tremendous work of these women in the male-dominated Parliament was commendable and that if the affirmative action was continued in subsequent democratic dispensations, Ghana would have had at least 60 women in the 230-member parliament and the situation where currently there were only 18 women in the House would be avoided.
She argued that comparatively, the CPP’s filing fees had always been the lowest, compared with other political parties, especially the two main parties — National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP).
Ms Anabila said apart from reducing its original filing fees by 50 per cent, it had further given female aspirants another 25 per cent rebate as a way of encouraging women and levelling the playing field for them.
She said the party believed that once women were given such opportunities it would prop them up and they would use their positions to prepare adequately to be able to contest male-dominated positions in future without fear of intimidation and the use of other rough tactics associated with elections.
She paid glowing tribute to her female colleagues in political positions, especially those in the CPP, including Mrs Susan Adu Amankwah, Greater Accra Regional Chairman of the CPP, for keeping the flame burning.
The party, at its central committee meeting, reduced all filing fees by 50 per cent.
Additionally, all women who want to contest any national or regional executive position would have their filing fees further reduced by 25 per cent.
With the 50 per cent reduction the new fees are as follows: National Chairman, GH¢10,000.00; Vice-chairman, GH¢ 7,500.00; Treasurer, GH¢ 7,500.00; General Secretary, GH¢ 7,500.00 and Organisers – GH¢ 2,500.00.
For the regional positions the fees are: Chairman, GH¢ 500.00; Vice-chairman, GH¢400.00; Regional Secretaries, GH¢ 400.00; Treasurer, GH¢ 400.00 and all others GH¢ 250.00.