'Disgraced' Carlos Ahenkorah explains why he snatched ballot papers on January 7

Carlos Kingsley Ahenkorah, the Tema West MP has explained that he was forced to snatch the ballot papers during the voting of a Speaker for the 8th Parliament on January 7, this year.

According to him, the face mask he was wearing could not allow him to chew the two ballot papers he snatched on the floor of the House.

“The NDC came with a certain mind, a certain mindset and that is what they wanted to achieve and nothing was going to stop them,” Carlos Ahenkorah said on UTV on Monday morning.

He added that immediately the NPP side of the House saw that two of their members had been compromised, they became troubled and wanted frantic solutions.

“I realised that after the counting of the ballot papers, voting has been established and everything is finished,” Ahenkorah said trying to justify why he decided to go and snatch the papers for voting to start all over again so that the NPP side can ensure that the whip system is restored to enable them to get the 138 votes.

“Unfortunately, I didn’t get the kind of support Muntaka got from his people…,” Ahenkorah said.

When asked if he communicated the decision of going to snatch the ballot paper to Majority Leader Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, the Tema West MP indicated that he went to his leader to demand action.

“I asked him, 'after counting of the papers, the election is completed and the NPP side of the house cannot do anything about it, so, you have to do something now.' But he still insisted that I should wait,” Carlos Ahenkorah narrated further.

Carlos Ahenkorah during the election of a Speaker for the 8th Parliament snatched ballot papers from the hands of the parliamentary official and bolted towards the exit of the Chamber amidst resistance from his colleagues.

He was not successful as he was accosted by security and some MPs before he could leave the chamber. The ballots were retrieved, but could not be counted since the process had now been compromised.

The current parliament is a hung parliament with both the incumbent NPP and the opposition NDC having 137 seats each. There is one independent MP. The NPP badly needed to elect a Speaker-former Speaker Aaron Mike Oquaye- they favoured them but they lost the election.