The battle lines have been drawn between the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) as both parties are taking the campaign to the next level in hopes to capture the Assin North seat.

The NPP on Wednesday, June 7, elected Charles Opoku as the parliamentary candidate to contest against the embattled James Gyake Quayson.

The Deputy General Secretary of the NDC, Mustapha Gbande, says the NPP is engaging in “borrowing popularity spree” to boost its chances of capturing the seat.

According to him, the NPP’s candidate is not a registered voter in the Assin North constituency.

“Our brothers are on a borrowing popularity spree because they have realised that there is no way they can win the seat from the NDC, and so the best that they can do is to go and look for someone who is not a voter in that constituency to boost their popularity,” he said.

Speaking on Newsnight on JoyFM, the vociferous party secretary claimed that most projects in Assin North that were abandoned have been revisited just to receive support from the electorates.

“Apart from the major road and an astroturf that have been completed, all other projects are projects that have been abandoned for some time, and the government is now revisiting those projects. These are called by-election projects. They are not genuine developmental agenda projects,” he said on Wednesday.

Mr Gbande said the recent move of the ruling government proves that the party was only concerned about votes.

In a rebuttal on the same show, National Organiser of the NPP, Henry Nana Boakye, said the newly elected parliamentary candidate “was a true indigene, and does not possess dual citizenship, born and bred in Assin Bereku, went to school here, he has his NGO offices here, he has a house here unlike Mr Quayson.”

He stressed that their opponent has lived abroad for four decades, and does not connect with the electorate in any way.

The National Organiser, popularly known as Nana B, said the NDC usually fabricates stories when events do not happen in their favour.

 “Jomoro NDC MP, he went to a similar court and the court said you know what, go ahead do your work, and then they [NDC] jubilated. The same court is saying Gyakye Quayson does not possess that requisite documentation to be in parliament and then you are saying the NPP is in cahoot with the court.

“I mean this attempt to always malign and bastardise the court is quite unfortunate and that is their campaign message here,” he said.

Again, touching on the “by-election project” accusation by Mr Gbande, Nana B said the project in question started years ago, adding that contractors have been working on them till date.

“It cannot be said that these projects are fortnight projects and these projects are by-election projects; not at all. These projects are projects targeted at consciously developing Assin North,” he said.