GBARNGA, Bong – Ahead of the July 31 senatorial by-election in Bong, two candidates are leading opinion polls conducted by the two biggest community radio stations in the county in terms of coverage.
Independent candidate Henrique Tokpa and the Coalition for Democratic Change’s Marvin Cole won separate opinion polls conducted on Radio Gbarnga and Super Bongese.
Tokpa won the Radio Gbarnga opinion poll early Saturday morning, obtaining 68 votes out of a total of 108 votes while Marvin Cole secured 39 votes.
Orlando Zarwolo of the All Liberian Party received one vote, while candidates Fairnoh Gbilah of the Vision for Liberia Transformation Party and Prince Kollie of the United People’s Party both received no votes.
Similarly, in Super Bongese’s opinion poll conducted Saturday morning, CDC’s Cole obtained 47 votes out of 77 votes, while Tokpa obtained 28. Fairnoh Gbilah and Orlando Zarwolo received one vote each.
Cole is a former mayor of Gbarnga who was dismissed by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf late 2016, barely three months after his appointment. His supporters, who saw him as a champion of development, rallied behind him to push for him to win the representative seat in the 2017 elections.
Tokpa presided over Cuttington University from 2002 to 2015 and oversaw a major increase of the university’s student and faculty body, from 558 students and 69 faculty members when he took over to nearly four times that number now. The university now has a junior college and a graduate school, both of which were started during Tokpa’s tenure. In the past, he has also served as chairman of the board of directors of the National Port Authority.
The polls were conducted via live phone-in talk shows on the two radio stations, and callers phoned in from different parts of the county to voice their choices for the Senate.
A total of 208,123 eligible voters in Bong will go to the polls on Tuesday to elect a senator that will replace Senator Jewel Howard-Taylor, who was elected as vice president of Liberia in 2017.
Voters in Montserrado will also go to the polls in a bid to elect a replacement for Senator George Weah, now president of Liberia.
The results of the opinion polls are unscientific and may not be an excellent predictor of the official poll on Tuesday given that the sample sizes are rather small, and the respondents were self-selected, which means they may not reflect the voting public. However, the results have to some extent, built the hope of the candidates and their supporters.
The chairperson of the Friends of Tokpa, Cassius Kpoeh, welcomed the results and praised media institutions for the initiative.
“The polls this morning tell us that our candidate is known by the work he has done in Bong County,†Kpoeh said.
He called on supporters to turn out in numbers on Tuesday to vote Tokpa in as the next senator for Bong.
Eldorado Keamue, the political affairs officer for Marvin Cole, said the results of the polls would not have much bearing on the outcome of the votes on Tuesday.
“Opinion poll is not something to be taken seriously; Unity Party won all opinion polls in Bong in the 2017 elections, but the CDC won Bong during the elections,†Keamue noted.
He said in the election for the representative of Bong’s third district in 2017, his boss, Cole, did not win most opinion polls conducted except one; however, Cole was elected as representative of the district.
Keamue also encouraged supporters of Cole in Bong to go to the polls on July 31 to vote Cole as their next senator.
Featured photo by Moses Bailey
