Ghanaian actor cum farmer, John Dumelo has revealed to Ghanaians that he has been in the known with regards to government’s request for actress Yvonne Nelson to contest in the 2020 Parliamentary elections in Ayawaso West Wuogon
According to Dumelo, he had a call from Yvonne prior to the elections where she informed him of turning down the offer.
According to him, Yvonne said “John, I can’t do that to you, I told them no, I can’t throw away our many years friendship because of politics”.
I remember @yvonnenelsongh called me sometime back before the 2020 elections to tell me someone extremely close to the current president had asked her to contest in Ayawaso West on the ticket of NPP. These were her words to me “John, I can’t do that to you, I told them no, I…
— Farmer John (@johndumelo) June 19, 2023
In her memoir launched last Sunday, Yvonne noted that she had been requested by an influential man in the Akufo-Addo led government to contest the Ayawaso West Wuogon parliamentary seat on the ticket of the NPP.
“The NPP had lost its MP for the area and one of the “wives” of the late MP won the byelection in 2019. The byelection was characterised by violence and resulted in the formation of a commission of enquiry to investigate it.
“She was lacing her boots to contest the seat in 2020. When I drew the attention of the
emissary to the fact that the party already had a candidate, he said the fact that he was contacting me meant that they had concluded their plans and would do everything within their power to pave the way for me to contest if only I was interested,” part of the memoir read.
According to the actress, “I asked him to give me a couple of days to think about it, but I had made up my mind the moment he broached the subject.”
She said she was not interested in the offer as she was not ready to represent the NPP.
“And was I going to allow myself to be someone’s political puppet? Once you accept to be sponsored by them, you lose your independence and they expect unalloyed loyalty from you. This was something I wouldn’t do even if I was interested. This person was the president’s family member. And from the modus operandi of the Akufo-Addo “family and friends” government, I wasn’t going to be their conduit, even if I was interested in going to parliament.”
She also revealed that since her colleague John Dumelo was contesting, she was not going to jeopardise their friendship any further.
“My colleague actor and friend, John Dumelo, was contesting that constituency on the ticket of the opposition NDC and they feared he could unseat the NPP candidate with his celebrity status.
Already, John Dumelo’s political affiliation had strained our friendship. We had had open exchanges on Twitter in the past and I wasn’t going to make things worse by openly contesting him. I wouldn’t betray our friendship to satisfy some people’s political calculations,” the memoir added.