D-Day For Fomena By-Election

The New Patriotic Party (NPP), National Democratic Congress (NDC) and Democratic People’s Party (DPP) have filed their nominations to contest the forthcoming Fomena by-election. The rest of the country’s registered political parties, including the Convention People’s Party (CPP), Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP), Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) and the People’s National Convention (PNC) have however failed to file their nominations to contest.

By the close of nominations, NPP, NDC and DPP had registered Nana Abu Bonsra, 49, an architectural consultant, Grace Amporful, 60, a teacher and Augustina Kyei, 47, a farmer, as their respective candidates.

Surprisingly, none of the candidates who had contested the seat alongside the late Hon Akwasi Afrifa during the 2004 parliamentary elections, showed up to join the fray, scheduled for January 23, this year.

Already, officials of the Electoral Commission (EC) have issued out notices of the election to the constituency, showing the photographs of the candidates.

A topographical study of the area by Daily Guide indicated that Fomena was smaller than the Offinso constituency, where a similar by-election was conducted recently.

Whereas the Offinso constituency had 98 polling stations, Fomena with about 26 communities, had 45. With Fomena, Dompoase and Akokerri as its major towns, the constituency had very bad road networks linking other villages, coupled with cellular phone communication difficulties.

Mr Lawrence Tetteh, a deputy Ashanti Regional Director of the EC, told Daily Guide in an interview on Monday that about 135 electoral officials had been recruited to undergo training to prepare them for the polls and the training programme for the officers would take place between Thursday and Friday.

According to him, printing of ballot papers for the election was on-going and would soon be delivered to the regional offices of the EC. Mr. Tetteh said the EC would hold a day’s district Inter-party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting to brief representatives of the contesting political parties on the need to share advice, expertise and experiences toward achieving a peaceful by-election.

In spite of the media hype of the by-election, the political atmosphere was dull, devoid of any major pre-election campaign activities. Observers however hoped that the contesting political parties would, from this week, storm the constituency with mammoth rallies to solicit votes.

A total of about 15,722 eligible voters were expected to queue on January 23 at the various polling stations in the constituency, to elect a new MP to replace the late Hon. Afrifa.

In the 2004 parliamentary elections, Hon. Afrifa swept 8,207 votes to beat his closest challenger, George Kofi Tieku, an independent candidate who had 4,096 votes. NDC’s John Toku bagged 2,009 votes; DPP’s candidate, Scotah Kobina James, polled 1,146 and Ampomah Thomas, another independent candidate, got 70 votes. A total of 194 votes was rejected.

Meanwhile, relatives of the late MP as well as leadership of NPP had settled on January 20 for the celebration of Hon Afrifa’s final funeral rites, three days to the election of his successor.

Unconfirmed reports indicated that President John Agyekum Kufuor, ministers of state, MPs, traditional rulers, the clergy and a number of politicians were expected to storm Fomena to pay their last respects to the late MP. The late Hon. Afrifa, who played a vital role in the development of the NPP in the constituency, died at the 37 Military Hospital, after a short illness.