General News of Monday, 8 December 2008

Source: The Heritage

Konadu Police Polls

The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) yesterday threw all of its arsenals onto practically every polling station across the country to poke their eagle eyes in the electoral process.

Not even the former first lady of the Republic of Ghana, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings, wife of former President Rawlings could afford to stay at home after voting.

The former first lady was one of two polling station agents at the Airport Police Barracks in the Ayawaso West Wuogon constituency of the Greater Accra region to police every step of voting to ensure that the process was free and fair.

She told The Heritage that, after voting, she decided to join the party's polling agent at Airport to assist in policing the process.

According to her, she had always suspected foul play at that particular polling station and that informed her decision to be part of the policing process there.

She said her main focus was that bit of the process where the electoral officers had to stamp the ballot papers before they were taken to the polling booths.

She noted, however, that the process had been very smooth devoid of any untoward incident at the time of the newspaper's visit.

The ex-first lady further stated that she was very optimistic the NDC would win both the presidential and parliamentary elections in yesterday's polls.

The presiding officer of the AirĀ¬port Police Barracks, Charles Christian Lartey, explained that as at the time the newspaper visited the polling station they had not encountered any problem

Out of the expected 938 registered voters, the station had recorded 398 votes at the time when the newspaper visited the polling station.

The transfer list, according to the presiding officer, was five, but around mid-afternoon, only one person had voted.

Other polling stations visited revealed an overwhelming number of people in long queues to cast their votes.

One major observation was that, the polling agents of the leading political parties, the New Patriotic Party and the NDC were visible all over the polling stations visited from Ledzorkuku, to La Dadekotopon, through Osu down to the Airport residential area.

The Convention People's Party, People's National Convention, Democratic Freedom Party, Democratic People's Party, and the independent presidential candidate, Amoafo Yeboah had polling agents at a few of the polling stations visited.