Bawumia leads Kumasi demo

Traffic flow in Kumasi, the Ashanti Regional capital, will definitely be impeded on Wednesday, April 6, as Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) vice presidential candidate, leads an expected massive demonstration in the city.

Dubbed ‘Baamu Yada’ – an Hausa expression which literally means ‘We won’t agree’ – demonstration, the protest march is expected to attract thousands of people from all segments of society, who would be dressed in red and black apparels, to demonstrate against the Electoral Commission (EC).

The demonstration would be a platform for the NPP, its partners and all well-meaning Ghanaians to pressurize the EC to conduct the validation exercise as soon as possible so that names of dead people, minors and foreigners, would be deleted from the current bloated voter register to ensure free and fair polls this year.

The Ashanti Regional branch of the NPP is organizing the demonstration in collaboration with its partners such as Let My Vote Count Alliance (LMVCA), Movement for Change (MFC) and Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG), and it is supposed to start at the Suame Roundabout at 6am.

The demonstrators, which would include other party bigwigs like Freddie Blay, Acting National Chairman and Bernard Antwi Boasiako aka Wontumi, Ashanti Regional Chairman, would walk through Abrepo Junction, Bantama, Adum, Asafo Interchange and converge at the Abbey’s Park.

“Some selected top people, including Dr. Bawumia, would then address the crowd at the converging point,” a statement jointly signed by Wontumi, Dr. Anthony Nsiah Asare (MFC), David Asante (LMVCA) and Dr. Afriyie Ayew (AFAG), indicated.

It said the protest march would be used to charge the EC to do the right thing by making sure that the validation exercise – which virtually all the political parties in the country are in full support of – is carried out to make sure that the voter register is thoroughly cleaned to ensure peaceful polls.

Again, the statement indicated that the demonstrators would use the occasion to ask the EC to as a matter of transparency, tell Ghanaians about the nature of the existing contractual relationship between it and Superlock Technologies Limited (STL), “Who we are told is in-charge of transmitting tallied electoral results.”