The county’s two major political parties have pitched camp in the Akwatia constituency ahead of the parliamentary election re-run for six polling stations to be conducted by the Electoral Commission (EC) on August 18.

The EC is due to conduct a re-run in six polling stations in the Akwatia constituency following a High Court ruling on Wednesday, July 15, 2009.

The December 7, 2008 election was inconclusive after thugs seized ballot boxes in the affected stations.

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) candidate, Baba Jamal and Messrs Basil Ahiable and Samuel Abrokwah, the two independent candidates in the 2008 elections had demanded a total re-run of the elections in the constituency after the incident, while the EC and NPP's Dr. Kofi Asare had said a rerun was necessary only in the six affected centres.

The High Court in Koforidua ordered the EC to rerun the entire election, however following an appeal at the Court of Appeal, the latter overturned the lower court's ruling and ordered the rerun for only the six centres.

After the 2008 general elections, the NPP Candidate, Dr Kofi Asare had 16,889 votes whiles Mr Baba Jamal of the NDC had 13,810. The NPP Candidate goes into the re-run leading Baba Jamal by 3,079 votes in the 83 out of 89 polling stations counted.

Baba Yakubu, the Akwatia constituency chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) told Joy News on Friday that the party was sure of victory because they were leading with more than 3,000 votes from the collated results of the first election and that the party only needs about 300 votes to round up their victory. He added that there was no way the NDC candidate, Baba Jamal could win the seat.

Ben Ephson, Pollstar and editor of The Daily Dispatch newspaper said in an interview that, “the NDC must perform a huge miracle to be able to win the seat in Akwatia.”

The pollstar added that there are currently about 4,000 eligible voters in the remaining six polling stations of which the NDC has a strong support base in three of the centres, whiles the three remaining centres are undecided.

“Baba Jamal (The NDC Candidate) needs more than 80 to 85 percent of the votes if all voters should turn out to vote to be able to win the seat which is impossible. If Baba Jamal wins, it will be a political miracle because the NPP has won the seat for three consecutive elections so far,” Ben Ephson said.