In four days time,the people of Ghana will go to the polls to elect their next president.
The election may throw up a very pleasant surprise which will be a first in Africa. One of the presidential aspirants, Ivor Greenstreet the flagbearer for the Convention Peoples’ Party (CPP), is the first disabled person to run for the highest office in Ghana.
The , the 50-year-old was already active in politics when a car accident in 1997 left him in a wheelchair.
A native of the capital Accra, he made an unsuccessful bid to enter parliament in the early 1990s, running for the CPP, a minor leftwing party founded by Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, during the struggle for independence from Britain.
He was elected presidential candidate of the Convention Peoples’ Party (CPP) after the party’s national delegates’ congress on Saturday, January 30, 2016 at the International Trade Fair Centre. Mr Greenstreet won the CPP presidential race with 1,288 votes, representing 64.2% of valid votes cast, beating closest contender Samia Yaba Nkrumah – the daughter of the party’s founder and Ghana’s first president, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, who emerged with 579 votes. The two others, Joseph Agyapong and Bright Akwetey pulled 83 and 42 votes, respectively.
He run for parliament on the CPP’s ticket in 2004, after the collapse of the Great Alliance, in the same constituency, amassing 4,964 votes. It was an unprecedented feat, given that the CPP had managed less than 500 votes in that constituency previously.
He went on to become CPP General Secretary, serving two four-year terms, spanning 2007 to 2015, and holds the reputation of being the only national officer to be re-elected for a second term. Ivor also served on the Disability Council from 2007-2009.
