By Nicholas Osei-Wusu
Polls have opened at various voting centres in Tuesday’s by-election in the Kumawu Constituency.
An estimated 35,000 registered voters are expected to cast their ballots to elect one of four candidates to complete the unexpired term of the late Member of Parliament for the area, Philip Atta Basoah.
The four candidates are Ernest Yaw Anim, NPP; Kwasi Amankwaah, NDC; and the two Independent Candidates who bear the same identity, Kwaku Dua, who are occupying the 3rd and 4th positions on the ballot.
The voting process has been peaceful across the 75 centres so far, with the first person casting his vote at exactly 7 a.m. at the Kumawu Anglican Primary School, which has 556 voters on the register.
The security presence in the constituency is very heavy, with the Inspector General of Police, Dr. Akufo Dampare, himself on the ground and actively involved in the deployment and monitoring of the police personnel.
Correspondent Nicholas Osei-Wusu, who is on the beat, reports that so far, election officials say they have no challenge with resource availability, while agents for all four candidates have reported to most of the centres without any complaint.
However, there are no long queues at the five centres our Correspondent has visited. As of about 8 a.m., the voters were trickling in one after another.
Kumawu is one of the 47 Constituencies that make the Ashanti region the largest in Ghana.
It is bothered by the Sekyere East, Sekyere Afram Plains, and Sekyere Central constituencies.
The by-election has been occasioned by the death of the MP, Philip Basoah, who died on March 27, this year, after a short illness. He was serving his third consecutive term, having first entered Parliament in 2013.
Interestingly, of all the four candidates in today’s by-election, it is only the third on the ballot, Kwaku Duah, who contested in the 2020 elections and nearly caused an upset when he polled more than 11,600 of the votes to draw down on the margin of victory of Mr. Basoah, who contested on the ticket of the NPP.