Ohene Ntow in Shock Defeat

Koforidua -- The whole Akropong Township stood still when the NPP parliamentary primary results were declared and Nana Ohene Ntow, a favourite candidate was declared the loser.

He obtained 38 votes only, as against 61 by Lawyer William Ofori Boafo, while Mr. Kwadwo Afari the NPP press secretary got none.

The Akropong Presbyterian Church Hall, where the primaries took place, was heavily guarded by police personnel, to control rising tension by followers of the candidates.

Addressing the delegates before the election, the NPP General Secretary, Mr. Dan Botwe stated that the party stood supreme, therefore those who had the party at heart would not allow infiltrators to destroy it.

According to him, democracy was being praticed fully in the NPP and the NPP would never ever impose anybody as a parliamentary candidate, on the electorate, otherwise, it would have imposed certain parliamentarians and prevented their loss.

The Akropong Constituency is one of the five constituencies, in which the NPP had never lost an election since 1992. In the 1992 the presidential election the NPP defeated the NDC by 43 votes. Professor Adu Boahen had 7,473, Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings had 7,430, Dr. Hilla Limann of PNC had 162 votes whiles others had a total of 1,117 votes. The parliamentary election was boycotted by the NPP.

The NDC was once again defeated by the NPP in the 1996 elections, the NPP garnering 15,497, the NDC 14,022, PNC 305. Here Mr. Agyare Koi Larbi defeated Mr. Anthony Gyampo by 14,590 to 14,293 in the parliamentary election.

PCP Kwabena Lokke came third with 608 votes whiles Kwame Ata-Ofori came last with 390 for the NCP.

In the 2000 general election, the NPP out-stretched the NDC as the NPP recorded 17,917 votes, NDC 8,600 , CPP 465, GCPP 240, NRP 165, PNC 102 and UGM 64.

For the parliamentary, Mr.Koi Larbi of the NPP ran neck to neck with NDC's Mr. Anthony Gyampo. Mr. Larbi recorded 8,659 votes whiles Mr. Anthony Gyampo had 8,625.

In that election, Dr. Albert G. Boahene an independent candidate had 5,113, followed by another independent candidate,. Nana E.H. Botsio with 4,394, CPP Sakyi B. Akuffo 914 and PNC Kofi Koranteng 136, out of 28,440 votes counted.

Under the previous registration, the Akropong constituency had 44,032 but the current registration had 40,652, falling short of voters which could be ghost names and unqualified voters who had only bloated the voters register.

Meanwhile, the NDC Eastern Region branch has conducted primaries to elect their parliamentary candidate, leaving only six constituencies to elect theirs.