Pollster and Managing Editor of the Daily Dispatch Newspaper Mr Ben Ephson is predicting that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo could lose close 400,000 votes going into the December 7, 2020 polls because of the several agitations in the upcoming parliamentary primaries of the party on June 20.
According to him on Accra-based 3FM monitored by MyNewsGh, problems at some constituencies where the President is perceived to be supporting certain candidates and causing anxiety among some delegates will trigger that.
“Now we realize that most of the delegates will want everybody to contest so that they can get money from all of them. Making somebody unopposed, it means that the person will not give the delegates a dime; so, by making that everybody contest they have 3 or 4 people to collect monies from, and they know they will by all means win the seat.
“If on the average, a minimum of 4,000 delegates decide not to vote, the party will win the seats by 7,000, 8000 but if you multiply those 4,000 people who are not voting by at least a 100 constituencies, the safe ones, Nana Addo is going into 2020 minus 400,000”, Mr. Ephson mentioned on 3FM.
Giving examples of some of the disqualified aspirants, he pointed out that “Two people were disqualified for taking the NPP to court; one was Grace Addo of Manso Nkwanta. She was the MP for the NPP-one of their safe seats in 2008 and 2012. She lost the primaries in the run-up to 2016 and took the party to court.
“The other person is a friend of Media General, Emmanuel Kutin. He had sued the government of Ghana on that military defense project and at that time he went to pick the form the suit was pending in the court and that was the basis for the disqualification. I know that for these two they disqualified them because they had sued the party.
“I also know that the Minister of Health, they are trying to protect him so that he concentrates on the covid because he won his seat by 2,000, 3000 votes.”
He added “Along the line too there have been persons that they have disqualified, like Addison; when you say somebody has nurtured the constituency well, this gentleman took eight months of his time to defend the party so there is a lot of anger.
And the NPP can take a chance, Akufo-Addo won 2016 by nearly 895,000 votes. They can do away with 400,000 bearing in mind that Mills won the 2008 run-off 40,000 votes.”
Source:MyNewsGh.com
