With over 5,000 police personnel deployed to Akwatia and precautionary security operations retrieving guns and ammunition, fusing into the campaigning process, tomorrow’s parliamentary by-election in the Eastern Region mining town has seen it al.
Having summoned the top shots of Ghana’s politics across one month of campaigning, it has elevated the stakes beyond a routine exercise to elect a Member of Parliament (MP) to replace a deceased one.
While all the bigwigs of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), including its flagbearer aspirants, attended the one-week memorial of the late MP for the area, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) office in Akwatia was commissioned yesterday, two days before the by-election.
Indeed, with parliamentary power heavily one-sided in favour of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), the outcome will hardly impact the party’s two-thirds majority in the legislature, even without the four independent MPs who have already chosen the side of the NDC.
The NPP is presenting a 40-year-old licensed small-scale gold miner, Solomon Kwame Asumadu, popularly known as Owuo, while the NDC is putting forward a lawyer, Bernard Bediako Baidoo, for tomorrow’s two-horse by-election.
The two are products of the NPP’s “appointment process” that discarded the elective regime for a supposedly popular choice, and the NDC’s internal contest that elected its Regional Secretary against the 2024 parliamentary candidate, Henry Boakye Yiadom.
Political scientists
However, three political scientists have told the Daily Graphic in separate interviews that what is at stake is more than just a parliamentary seat.
It is about a combination of bragging rights, popularity test, and auditioning for future elections, they argued.
Researcher and pollster, Mussa Dankwah, a Senior Lecturer at the Department of History and Political Studies of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Dr Kwasi Amakye-Boateng, and Project Director of Democracy Project, Dr John Osae-Kwapong, said the high stakes in the Akwatia by-election were for bragging rights and image enhancement.
When the NDC wins, it does not add anything to its super majority in Parliament, just as it cannot change the NPP’s minority status.
Until the passing of Ernest Kumi, the MP for the constituency, the NPP’s 88 seats in Parliament fell below one-third of the 276 seats in the chamber, but the party’s quest to replace its deceased member has been met with a tough challenge from the incumbent governing party, which had initially contested the legitimacy of Kumi’s victory in the 2024 election.
Mr Dankwah, who accurately predicted the 2024 election results and has, in a recent poll, predicted a 53 per cent victory for the NDC candidate, said the Akwatia by-election had assumed high stakes, “but inconsequential” to the numbers game in Parliament.
“For the NPP, winning Akwatia does not change anything. However, it appears the NDC wants to win the seat for bragging rights and to show that it is still popular and has the full confidence of the voters eight months after winning power.
“For the NPP, it is to show that its base is still solid and not fragmented as others may suggest, and that could boost the morale of the rank and file if it can win the seat again,” Mr Dankwah told the Daily Graphic.
For the NPP, it appears the strategy is to whip up sentiments and prey on sympathy votes to win, Mr Dankwah said.
However, polling data shows that sympathy votes account for only four per cent of voters’ priorities, Mr Dankwah recounted.
Inconsequential contest
Dr Osae-Kwapong said it could be tempting to describe a single-seat by-election as inconsequential to the fortunes of the political parties, given that if the NDC won or lost the election, it would not change its supermajority status in Parliament, just as victory or defeat would not change the minority status of the NPP.
“What is at stake for the two parties, in my opinion, is bigger than just this one seat. It is what a win or loss offers each party for political weaponisation,” he explained.
“If the NDC wins, I am quite certain they will seize upon it as a testament to Ghanaians’ appreciation of the government’s performance so far and the declining fortunes of the NPP.
One of the commonly used phrases, I observe, is ‘the NDC is the most attractive political party in Ghana today’.
And nothing will make the NDC happier than winning an NPP-held seat to validate this narrative.
“Whoever loses, I have no doubt, will downplay it as inconsequential. But that is the interesting thing about politics,” Dr Osae-Kwapong added.
He traced Akwatia’s “interesting political trajectory”, citing the even success rates of the contending parties in the eight parliamentary contests post-1992 as evidence of the constituency’s unique profile.
“Of the eight elections held so far, discounting the 1992 transition election, both parties have won the constituency four times each, the NPP in 2000, 2004, 2016 and 2024, and the NDC in 1996, 2008, 2012 and 2020,” he said.
Bold statement
Dr Amakye-Boateng said the stakes were high in the by-election because each of the two contending parties wants “to make a bold statement” with the contest.
He said at the local level in Akwatia, the two parties want their candidates to win the election, stressing that this was the driving force behind the high stakes.
“I do recall something we read about J.B. Danquah. He lost the elections in his own backyard.
Nkrumah’s candidate won. And I think NDC will be adopting Nkrumah’s strategy.
Danquah visited the place, and then he was asked what he could do for the people.
It was all promises. Promises that were thrown into the future.
Then Nkrumah himself went there with his candidate to engage the people.
They asked him a similar question. Nkrumah gave them dates, specific dates that he would come and address himself to some of those things that they needed in the place.
And that was it. It worked for him.
His candidate won, and Danquah, the royal, lost,” Dr Amakye-Boateng recalled.
“I expect NDC to adopt a similar strategy, a hands-on, strict matter-of-fact issue,” the academic added.
Police ready, no intimidation
At a press conference in Akwatia last Friday, the Director-General, Operations of the Ghana Police Service, Commissioner of Police (COP), Dr Vance Baba Gariba, said the Police Administration had contacted the Electoral Commission (EC) to provide accreditation for monitors and media personnel who would be covering the by-election.
COP Gariba warned that anybody who did not possess accreditation should not come to any polling station or collation centre, as they would not be spared when caught.
“Only election observers, election officers and the media would be allowed at the polling centres”, he said.
He stated that motorbikes were prohibited from entering the polling stations and they could not park 100 metres from the polling centres.
In an interview with the Daily Graphic in Akwatia yesterday, the Director of Public Affairs of the Ghana Police Service, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Grace Ansah-Akrofi, said the heavy police deployment for the Akwatia by-election was not to intimidate voters but rather to give them full protection during the electioneering period.
She emphasised that the deployment of over 5,000 police personnel in Akwatia would be able to cater for all the 119 polling stations in the 21 electoral areas divided into nine zones to provide security to residents and voters before, during and after the polls.
ACP Ansah-Akrofi stated that the police were there to also guarantee the citizenry their peace and security, and that the voters should not entertain any fears.
She said the police checkpoints along the roads were part of the security arrangements to effectively control access to make sure that the police would be able to conduct routine checks where necessary.
“We are here because of your safety and security and to ensure law and order, so everybody in Akwatia constituency should feel free and step up and go about your normal duties without fear or intimidation,” she said.
Residents’ mood
In Akwatia and the neighbouring Topremang, Apinamang, Boadua and Akyem Wenchi towns, armed police officers are positioned at vantage points and in the streets, while new security checkpoints have increased police visibility.
The heavy police deployment in the town has been welcomed by the local population in the wake of the constituency’s history of electoral violence.
A kenkey seller at Boadua Market told the Daily Graphic that she would come very early in the morning to vote because the police were around to protect her.
She said the influx of people, including state security, into Akwatia would impact the local economy positively, and that she would leverage the opportunity to sell.
A voter at Akwatia Lorry Park Polling Station, Ibrahim Issahaku, was, however, not happy about the heavy police presence, although he said he would nonetheless cast his vote tomorrow.
He urged the police to be neutral and professional to ensure a fair process.
A voter from Akyem Wenchi, Mensah Agyapong, said he would vote for the NPP candidate, Mr Asumadu, to honour the memory of the deceased MP, while another voter, Alhassan Osman, said he would vote for the NDC candidate, Bernard Bediako Baidoo.
