'NPP's impatience to go through Challenge Process to blame for voter registration conflicts' - Gabriella Tetteh

A communicator of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Gabriella Tetteh, has said the governing New Patriotic Party’s impatience to go through the Challenge Process of the Electoral Commission in resolving eligibility issues during the just-ended voter registration exercise, is to blame for some of the conflicts that erupted during the exercise.

“Per the EC’s laws, if you’re opposed to someone’s residential status, there’s a form for you to fill, which is the Challenge Form”, she told CTV’s Dwabre Mu host Kwame Appiah Kubi on Tuesday, 11 August 2020, insisting: “That is the process to use”.

“But what was causing a lot of confusion with the registration process is that the NPP side sees the Challenge Process as too long and bureaucratic and, so, told its agents to take matters into their own hands by physically preventing people from being registered if they had suspicions about their eligibility”, she observed.

He, however, noted that it was “wrong” to do so “because, one cannot possibly know everyone within a certain vicinity”.

“So, if you task your party agents to be physically preventing people from registering, you rather bring conflict”, she said.

At least, two people died during the registration process as a resulted of attendant violence.

Gunshots were fired at some centres, too.

The most infamous among the gun incidents was the firing of warning shots by the MP for Awutu Senya East, Mavis Hawa Koomson, who said it was for self-defence.

The first fatal incident occurred at Banda in the Bono Region during violent clashes between supporters of the NDC and NPP.

The victim was a trained teacher.

The second fatality was recorded during the mop-up registration exercise over the weekend at Nkrankwanta in the Dormaa West District also of the Bono Region.

A pickup truck and motorbike were torched during the skirmishes that led to the death one person.

The police has arrested three suspects in connection with the latest incident.