Hawa Koomson’s apology doesn’t erase misconduct – Samson Lardy Anyenini

Samson Lardy Anyenini, a private legal practitioner and multimedia journalist says he has some difficulty with a person such as Mavis Hawa Koomson, who is the Fisheries and Aquaculture minister-nominee being nominated by the president due to her conduct of pulling a gun at a polling station during the voter registration exercise in July 2020.

According to Anyenini, even though when she appeared before the Appointments Committee of Parliament, Hawa Koomson was forced to apologise for her misconduct, the apology does not erase what she did at her Constituency.

Samson Lardy Anyenini explained: “I have some difficulty, not about her lack of eloquence, but having come to know and seen her conduct, I have difficulty in why such a person should be put up to be a minister of state.”

“The apology doesn’t remove the misconduct and so what message is being sent out there,” Samson Lardy Anyenini told Paul Adom-Otchere on Good Evening Ghana.

Mavis Hawa Koomson apologised for the gun shooting incident that she was involved in during the voter registration exercise ahead of the 2020 elections.

She told the Appointments Committee of Parliament during her vetting on Thursday, February 18, that her life was in danger hence, she needed to defend herself.

The Awutu Senya East MP admitted to firing the shots at a voter registration centre in her constituency saying that she wished such events never occurred.

The former minister for the now-defunct Ministry of Special Development Initiatives told the Committee that the Police is currently investigating the matter.

“It was [an] unfortunate incident which I [wish] never happened on that day. I don’t also pray that it ever happens again in the history of our politics in Ghana...Mr Chairman, I want to use this opportunity to apologize to the people who were so scared on that day...It was in defence of myself because I felt my life was in danger in the circumstance that I found myself that day. I thought I needed to have saved my life,” Hawa Koomson said.

She added: “Yes, I have a bodyguard but that day the bodyguard was not with me because it was as early as 4 AM. She had then not reported for duty.

“It was the circumstance that I found myself [in] that led me to it and as I said it is still under [.....] Police investigations. I really regret that day; I wish it never happens [again] in the life of our political activities.”