It is undeniably a fact that hardly do people believe in opinion polls in our part of the world, yet still, one was conducted a day before University of Education, Winneba students head to the polls to elect executives for the 2019/2020 academic year. This opinion poll conducted by Kampustoday.com tipped one Emmanuel Oduro Fosu to win the SRC presidency.
This was almost confirmed on Tuesday, 21st of May 2019 when UEW students took to polls to cast their votes. At the end, none of the four SRC presidential candidates was able to attained the 50+1 votes needed to become the next SRC president. However, Mr. Emmanuel Oduro Fosu showed early signs of being the likely candidate to come top. He led his compatriots with a huge margin of 1593 votes, having secured 4091(47.33%) of the votes cast. Closely matching him was Zakari Ali Sulley, who garnered 2489 votes representing 28.90%, followed by Morris Samuel Batsa with 1442 votes and Gikpoe Noble Jesse with 428 votes.
Owing to UEW-SRC’s constitution, the electoral Commissioner shall announce a runoff between two candidates with the highest votes but are unable to secure the 50+1 percent of votes cast.
Asuch, the road to UEW-SRC Presidency was cut short for Mr. Batsa and Mr. Gikpoe, leaving Mr. Fosu and Mr. Zakari in a two man race.
The runoff came off peacefully on 24th May. After polls, the Electoral Commissioner, Miss Enyonam Mabel Lolo declared Mr. Emmanuel Oduro Fosu as President elect. He beat his opponent Mr. Zakari in all polling stations but one. Out of a total valid votes cast of 7,251 , Mr. Fosu polled 4,914 representing 67.76%, the highest percentage ever recorded in the history of UEW- SRC elections while Mr. Zakari polled 2,337 representing 32.3%.
Mr. Emmanuel Oduro Fosu’s victory is a special one as he has become the first ever Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Sports (HPERS) student to ascend UEW-SRC throne.
His victory, again comes as a big relief as students of University of Education, Winneba had a record of twice in the last four years being without a functioning substantive SRC Executives for 2015/2016 and 2017/2018 academic year respectively.
Congratulations to the electoral Commissioner, Hon. Enyonam Lolo Mabel for organizing a free, fair and credible elections.
Credit: Robert Atsu Okor
University of Education, Winneba.
