Ernest Kofi Adu
8 August 2008
Kumasi — THE NATIONAL Chairman of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Dr. Kwabena Adjei says he has no apology to make when he stated that jungle laws are being operated in the Ashanti Region, after witnessing what he describes as "serious discrimination" against people of Northern origin in the ongoing voter registration exercise.
"It is sad to work for the unity of this country only for you to be denied your right, with men in uniform as collaborators," he complained in a fit of anger to The Chronicle at the Ashanti Regional Office of NDC in Kumasi, during an interview.
He accused the police and some officers of the Electoral Commission (EC) of making unacceptable moves to disenfranchise prospective Ghanaian voters who have genuinely attained the voting age on the basis of coming from the north, an accusation which has been flatly denied.
The NDC chairman claimed that as many as 50 people of Northern extraction-encompassing porters and attendants and helpers of fishmongers around the railway line area in Kumasi- were denied registration at the Zion School registration centre. Ranting and threatening mayhem, Dr. Kwabena Adjei accused the NPP and its collaborators "of a scheme to steal this year's elections", without taking any lessons from the Cote d'ivoire experience. "The NPP is employing crooked methods to take power by the back door. We are putting the issue in the public domain so that any action taken in the near future will be well understood by Ghanaians," he pointed out.
According to him, the Regional Police Commander, DCOP Kwaku Ayensu Opare Addo, whom he accused of being an NPP man in Police uniform, was purposefully brought to Ashanti for this year's general elections, to intimidate and harass NDC supporters and sympathisers in the region.However, revelations from the polling centre during a visit by The Chronicle contradicted claims by the NDC National Chairman.
It became clear that the affected people, some of who gave their names as Alhassan Karim 26, Pius Agem 22, Mary Awuni 36, Eva Atindaala, all from Bolga in the Upper West Region, were denied registration because they could not provide their house numbers for registration officers to consider them as genuine residents of the area.
A 28-year-old woman, Ataa Elizabeth, who provided a house number BH 25 for registration at the centre, found herself detained after it was discovered that the number she gave was wrong. Meanwhile, the Acting Ashanti Regional Secretary, Mr. Doe Tamakloe, said it was unfortunate for some members of the NPP to ask non-indigenes to go to their native regions to register.
He stated that the "secret registration going on at the Asanteman Senior High School, CPC and other undisclosed locations "was unacceptable" and called on Ghanaians to reject the registration exercise in the region, in view of what he considered to be "malpractices and intimidation" that have characterised the exercise. According to him, the "frustration" was a pointer that the NPP had already lost the elections in its own stronghold.
In contrast, the NPP Subin Constituency Chairman, Alhaji Abdulai Baba has slammed the claims of the NDC, describing them as "propaganda and political talk" to dissuade law enforcement officers from carrying out their duties. According to him, no prospective genuine voter had ever been denied the right to register in the Constituency, and that those complaining only failed to meet the registration requirement as backed by law.
He believed that the NDC was being haunted by its own shadow, thereby fomenting trouble and making mountains out of molehills.
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