Voters registration: Calm returns to Kasoa area after gunshot violence

Calm has returned to a registration centre in the Awutu Senya East constituency after gunshots were fired indiscriminately in the area.

Registrants, Electoral Commission (EC) officials had to flee for their lives following a confrontation which ensued between some alleged ‘political party actors’ while applicants queued to register and acquire their Voter Identification cards on Monday, July 20, 2020.

According to initial reports, the applicants and some residents after an altercation at the centre witnessed some men trooping into the area, firing some gunshots and burning some motorbikes.

A viral video however from the scene captured Member of Parliament for the constituency, Mavis Hawa Koomson in a heated verbal exchange with a middle-aged woman, who is suspected to be a member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

News of the incident sent widespread reactions and outrage from the general public and the media which prompted the MP to grant an interview to Accra-based radio station, Adom FM. She admitted to firing the gunshots on her own, in the said interview.

“None of my men had guns on them when we got to the centre. I fired the shots myself,” Mavis Hawa Koomson told Adom FM.

“I’m a Member of Parliament, I need to protect myself. It was at dawn; my police escort had not started work yet. So that is a mechanism I have adopted in his absence,” she added.

GhanaWeb’s visit to the registration centre in the Kasoa area on Tuesday, July 21, 2020 revealed more. Some residents and eyewitnesses recounted to the news team, the sequence of events as they happened, noting that the incident had impacted them and the registration exercise as a whole.

Some residents however were happy about the deployment of police and the military to the area to ensure calm and sanity.

Commander of the Kasoa Divisional Police and his team were at the centre to observe and ensure all protocols were in place for a smooth continuation of the registration exercise.

Meanwhile the EC, while condemning the action in a statement noted “with concern”, some acts of violence at some registration centres across the country “in the form of physical and verbal attacks on its officials. The violence, according to the statement, “is perpetuated by political party supporters and sympathizers”.