...As Akufo-Addo Votes Diminish In Eastern Region

Dr. Omane Boamah , Deputy Minister for Environment, Science and Technology, has predicted a one round victory for the National democratic Congress (NDC) during the 2012 presidential elections. He said there would be no runoff since the party would knock out the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in round one.

The deputy minister declared this at a forum in Kumasi organized by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology (KNUST) branch of the National Democratic Congress’s (NDC) Tertiary Institutions Education Network (TIEN). According to him, the political fortunes of the NPP in the 2012 elections will suffer a decline with the introduction of the biometric voters register, which has no room for rigging.

“If elections were to be held today, NDC would win by 56%”, Dr Omane said, noting that voters have confidence in the Mills-led administration and will renew the party’s mandate to continue with developments through good governance. The deputy minister said he is not perturbed by a recent result of polls ahead of the 2012 elections by synovate, a research group, which has predicted victory for the opposition NPP party. Such polls could be sham he pointed out.

He expressed worries about Joy Fm and Myjoyonline’s refusal to publicize the outcome of their poll which has placed President Mill ahead of Nana Addo but rather chose to highlight a discredited synovate polls. Out of a total number of 12,920 votes cast as at 13th December, 2011, through myjoyonline poll, Mills was leading by 50% with 6,438 votes and 44% for Nana Addo with 5,726 votes.

One strategy NPP uses in creating a false impression about its popularity is to pay surrogate bodies to conduct fake polls in their favour. The Managing Editor of the Dispatch Newspaper, Ben Ephson exposed this unethical, diabolic and desperate behaviour of the NPP in the US Cables published by Wikileaks, which was confirmed by Ben Ephson himself.

According to the US cable expose on NPP, Ephson lamented the role of money in the current campaign, saying that ho ‘’had never seen so much cash before’’. Again, he said quite openly that the NPP had tried to bribe him with at least $20,000 to produce a poll favourable to them. He named the party official offering the money as Gabby Ochere-Darko,a cousin of the party’s candidate, Akufo-Addo.

The childhood presidential ambition of Nana Addo Akufo-Addo looks certain to hit a dead end after the 2012 elections. His political image at both intra and inter party levels is already bruised with drug allegations championed by his own political opponents during the party’s 2007 infamous flagbearership context. This affected his chances and therefore he could not secure the 50 plus 1 mandate of delegates to lead the party but was allowed by the magnanimity of delegates for the sake of party unity and cohesion.

A document cited by Daily Democrat suggests NPP defeat in the 2012 election would be premised on the decline of votes in their strongholds of Ashanti and Eastern Region.

Akufo-Addo’s performance in his home region witnessed a drop in votes in the 2008 from the impressive performance of former President Kufour during the 2000 and 2004 elections. It is suggested Nana Addo’s poor performance in his home region is the impact of his inability to use his good offices as a Member of Parliament for 12years and minister for 8 years to bring any meaningful development to the chiefs and people of Akyem Abuakwa constituency.

This justifies the recent call by some party supporters for a more credible candidate to replace Nana Addo to avoid another calamity at the polls after the recent damming US cables exposé quoted Mr Kwesi Pratt, Dr. Aning and a former US Ambassador to Ghana, Pamela Bridgewater as having confirmed the NPP flagbearer has a habit of drug use.

The 2012 elections are billed to be more credible because of the Electoral Commission’s (EC) decision to capture voters’ information biometrically. The inherent mechanism in the biometric registration will produce a credible and reliable register to eliminate and check rigging, an avenue capitalized on by the NPP during the 2008 presidential and parliamentary elections in Ashanti and other parts of the country which are the party’s strongholds.

In the last elections, voters’ turn-out in certain polling stations in the Ashanti region recorded incredible figures between 100% and 139.9%. For example, at the Temporary Booth K.M.A Store polling station in the Subin constituency of Ashanti region, 673 people cast their votes as against the official 548 voters in the register representing 139,9% of total votes cast. These defects, naked robbery, perpetuated by the NPP government would be corrected by the new voters’ system and vigilance from political parties due to the favourable voting environment the NDC government has assured voters. Also in the eastern region, the NPP will continue to experience decline in votes, as manifested during the Atiwa Bye-elections, Akufo-Addo’s second ‘home’.