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Today’s parliamentary by-election in Ejisu in the Ashanti Region has assumed an important dimension for the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) as one of their own seeks an upset that could have consequences for the party in the legislature.
Kwabena Owusu Aduomi, a three-term former Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency and former Deputy Minister of Roads and Highways, who has quit the party to go independent against the NPP’s candidate, Kwabena Boateng, stands on the verge of a personal achievement that would make the NPP a minority in Parliament.
Until now, Ejisu had remained a safe seat for the NPP, but projections from credible polls, including the work of Global InfoAnalytics, have placed the election on a knife’s edge, even with the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) declining to field a candidate.
That President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo made a campaign trip to the constituency at the weekend to shore up support for the NPP’s Kwabena Boateng has fuelled the sense of concern within the party quarters about the threat of losing a seat in the balanced numbers in Parliament.
Today’s by-election follows the death on March 7, this year, of the then MP for the area, John Ampontuah Kumah, who was a serving Deputy Minister of Finance until his demise.
A total of 106,812 registered voters are expected to cast their ballots in 204 polling stations across the constituency.
Three political parties and three independent candidates are vying for the vacant seat to represent the people of Ejisu in Parliament. The governing NPP’s candidate is up against Beatrice Boakye of the Liberal Party of Ghana (LPG) and Esther Osei of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), with independent candidates Gabriel Agyemang Joseph and Attakorah Joseph completing the list.
According to political watchers and analysts, the contest would be between the former MP and the NPP candidate, Mr Boateng. Mr Aduomi was said to have fallen out with the NPP following his defeat at the constituency primary in 2020 and officially resigned from the party early this year.
An opinion poll conducted by Global InfoAnalytics ahead of the election suggested that the NPP candidate, Mr Boateng, was only slightly ahead of Mr Aduomi.
Some former Independent candidates, including Jacob Osei Yeboah, who contested the 2012 general election as an independent presidential candidate, have urged the people of Ejisu to vote for Mr Aduomi in the election.
The Grand Coalition Ghana, a coalition of minority political parties in Ghana, as well as Independent presidential and parliamentary aspirants led by Mr Yeboah, in a press statement ahead of the election said members of the group had been on the grounds in the Ejisu Constituency and had no doubt that the electorate were resolved to vote massively for Mr Aduomi.
Mr Aduomi said he entered the race following the call on him from the constituents who pressed on him to contest. Even though six people are running for the seat, the contest is, however, between the NPP and the former MP.
Mr Aduomi is actually the only stumbling block between the NPP and the seat and the party has marshalled all its arsenals to scamper the candidature of Owusu-Aduomi. If the happenings in the constituency are anything to go by, maybe another Fomena beckons Parliament where the party vilified its former member who was running as an independent candidate against the party’s choice.
The party moved all its arsenals against the independent candidate but in the end, the independent candidate sailed through and is currently the Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament.
Could Mr Aduomi also become the rejected stone that eventually became the cornerstone?
