NDC Race: Portuphy Likely To Win Chairmanship Slot

20.12.2014 LISTEN

The pendulum tilts in favour of Coordinator of the national disaster management organisation (NADMO), Kofi Portuphy as far as the race for the chair slot of the governing National Democratic Congress is concerned, pollster Ben Ephson has told Bernard Nasara Saibu on starr today.

According to the Managing Editor of the Daily Dispatch Newspaper, incumbent chair Dr Kwabena Adjei may struggle to hold his own in his attempt to win the slot for the third consecutive time.

“I think that if Dr Kwabena Adjei is popular, he should have been able to pull through, given the fact that three leading members are contesting against him, but from the things he's been saying, like in the interview with Ibrahim [Alhassan], I think that Kofi Portuphy will have a slight edge, because normally if Kwabena Adjei was strong and he's even 70 percent unpopular, the three should be able to split 70 percent which gives Kwabena Adjei even 30 percent popularity and he'll sail through, but there seems to be a ground swell against him…”

According to him, the two other contestants in the race – former Minister of Trade and Industry Dan Abodakpi and current Vice Chair Huudu Yahaya – will not have a major impact on the outcome of the race.

“I think that Mr Dan Abodakpi and Alhaji Huudu Yahaya, I don't think they will pose any threat, if there's going to be any threat, it will come from Kofi Portuphy,” Ephson said.

“One of the unwritten conventions in the NDC is that the Chairman and the leader of the party must not come from the same region and Huudu Yahaya is a bit complicated when you realise that he's an in-law to the President. I'll be very surprised if he places second, even. I believe that it's just between Portuphy and Kwabena Adjei,” the host of Ephson's file on starr103.5FM said Wednesday.

With the General Secretary position, Ephson told starr today host Bernard Nasara Saibu on Wednesday that incumbent Johnson Asiedu Nketia will rout his only contender Abdul Ishaq Farrakhan.

“It's a no contest”, he said of General Mosquito's contender.