Limited Registration Exercise Was Very Poor In Volta Region-NPP V/R Chair

On the scale of zero to 10 per cent, the Volta Regional Chairman of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), John Peter Amewu has scored the limited voters registration exercise of the Electoral Commission (EC) in the region zero.

According to him, the limited registration exercise was generally bad because the police force which is supposed to act professionally under the democratic dispensation chose to brutalise the citizens to favour a particular faction.

“It was unfair, very inhumane and wicked attitude towards a fellow human being…on the scale of zero to 10 per cent, I will score the EC zero; the limited registration exercise was generally bad because in an emerging democracy like Ghana, under no circumstance would you allow our police force to act the way they did and I don’t think this can be accepted in any part of the world”, he lamented on Okay FM’s Ade Akye Abia Morning Show.

Tension is mounting at Metsrikasa in the Akatsi North District of the Volta Region as a result of a misunderstanding over the just-ended limited registration exercise organised by the Electoral Commission (EC).

Mr Peter Anku, the Akatsi District Electoral Registration Supervisor, said during the exercise that “There is serious tension here, serious confusion as I am speaking with you right now. The youth of the town are harassing and preventing other people from registering.”

The NPP Volta Chairman however on Okay FM hinted he was assaulted on Sunday, May 8, 2016 by the police at a registration centre at Metsrikasa; explaining that he received a call from the registration centre at Metsrikasa about the alleged movement of the centre to an unknown location.

He said he immediately drew the attention of the regional Electoral Commission officer, Mr Selormey Adukpo Dogbey, but he (Amewu) disagreed to the explanation given him by the EC officer, which he claimed was not consistent with the report he was getting on the ground.

At Metsrikasa, Mr Amewu confronted the police and one Supt Hlormenu responded that he only answered to the IGP, adding that he then saw some of the officers moving towards Avuletey, Regional Operations Officer of the NPP to heckle him and he (Amewu) then decided to take a shot of the scene with his mobile telephone.

The police, he asserted became furious and requested for the phone but he refused to give it out; claiming the police forcibly hit his left arm with the butt of their gun to collect the phone from him.

Reacting to the accusation on the same platform, Superintendent Hlormenu said he never attacked the NPP Volta Chairman but rather he instructed his ‘boys’ to inspect the phone of the NPP Chairman to see what he was doing on the phone.

Supt Hlormenu insisted the police patrol vehicle was not the one carrying the EC materials and the equipment for the registration as the NPP Volta regional Chairman has reported.