London-based Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) has for the second time predicted a win for the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the December 7 polls.
In April this year, EIU predicted a close margin win for Ghana’s opposition party in a report and has again indicated that though both the presidential and legislative elections would be hostile. the NPP will be declared victorious.
“We expect Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP to be victorious at the December presidential and legislative elections, given popular frustration with Ghana’s poor economic performance under the recent NDC administration,” the London-based EIU of the Economist Magazine predicted in its October edition.
The EIU said: “Pre-election spending in 2016 will put pressure on the fiscal deficit target set in conjunction with the IMF, although the government will be more successful at resisting large-scale populist spending than in previous election years.”
The report, however, did not mention any possible violence in the upcoming elections but noted that exercise will expose Ghana to notable risks, some of which will come from outside the country.
With the reports of corruption in the country’s judiciary and the experiences in the 2012 election petition, the report suggests none of the parties will be interested in going to the Supreme Court to challenge the verdict of the election, a situation that has raised political tensions a notch higher.
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) is a UK based company that provides country, industry and management analysis. It is also one of the world’s leading resource for economic business research, forecast, and analysis.
This is not the first time the Unit is predicting the outcome of elections in the country.
In February 2012, the unit predicted a win for the late President Prof. John Evans Mills who died in July of the same year.
When the late President was succeeded by John Mahama, EIU again predicted that President John Mahama was going to win the presidential elections in later that year, a forecast that was upheld.
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