Gun violence: Prosecute Hawa Koomson if she is guilty – OccupyGhana

Pressure group OccupyGhana has called on the Police Service to prosecute the Special Development Minister, Mavis Hawa Koomson, if she found guilty in the shooting incident at a registration centre at Kasoa.

The MP who has confessed firing a warning shot at the centre claimed it was to defend herself after feeling threatened while touring registration centres in the constituency Monday.

“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 the modus operandi I engaged in his absence,” she told Accra-based Adom FM.

In a statement OccupyGhana said: “The use of force or violence is a crime under our laws, unless there is reasonable justification, and within the strict bounds provided by law. Specifically, it is a crime to fire a weapon ‘in a town without lawful and necessary occasion.’ Possession of a firearm ‘without lawful excuse’ is a first-degree felony. And it is also a crime to have an offensive weapon while in a public place, public meeting, or at a public assembly of people, ‘without lawful authority.’

“We condemn all election-related violence. We also condemn the inexplicable circumstances under which the Minister took a loaded weapon to the registration centre in the first place, when the Minister has police guard, paid for by the state and whose job is to protect her.

Further, the law that regulates the registration of voters also provides a process for challenging ineligible people who register or attempt to do so. That is what should be followed, if people are breaking the law. No individual has the mandate or power to seek to prevent others from registering simply because that individual believes that the law is being flouted”.

It added: “We cannot have a registration exercise and then an election where people would feel so threatened that they would either stay at home and not vote at all, or go to the registration or polling stations armed. Ghanaians are already battling the spread of the dreadful coronavirus. This should not be combined with needless threats to our lives and safety.

“We call on the police to quickly investigate the circumstances under which this incident occurred. If it is found that the Minister breached the law, she should be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible under the law”.