Tema Central parliamentary collation postponed

The Electoral Commission has agreed with the parliamentary candidates of Tema Central to postpone the collation of the parliamentary results to Tuesday, December 10, 2024, at the Tema Police Regional Command.

Manasseh Ofosuhene Asante, Tema Metro Electoral Officer, told the media that the decision was taken looking at the volatile situation at the collation centre.

He explained that both parties were on the same page that it was not safe for them to continue with collation after Ms Ebi Bright, NDC candidate, and Charles Forson, NPP candidate, agreed that the grounds were not safe.

He added that Forson had left the collation centre earlier during the collating of the presidential result due to some commotion, indicating that “when we called him to come for the parliamentary collation, he said he wanted to come back, but some people had surrounded his house with motorbikes.” So, we had to send police to his house to bring them back.”

He further said, “So he came with his team for us to start, as we were preparing to start, then the NDC candidate also came in saying she had also gone out to look at the situation in terms of security, indicating that she does not think it was safe to continue.

“This meant that both parties were on the same level and that it was not safe for us to continue, so the regional commander and I discussed with them that we will do it on Tuesday at 10 am at the regional police command.”

Touching on the earlier commotion at the collation centre, he disclosed that the situation made all of them uncomfortable, and “we feel the environment is not very safe for us to continue, so we were hanging around; we could not even go out; we were waiting for everything to calm down. I sent a message to the regional commander to bring in reinforcements when the situation was worsening, and he brought in about 100 officers so they could push most of the people out.”

According to him, information reaching him indicates that the tension at the centre arose from a rumour that the NPP candidate had refused to sign the pink sheet for the parliamentary result, even though they were yet to start collating the result.