Early voting in Kumasi characterized by long queues

Long, winding and orderly queues characterized early voting in Friday’s Presidential and Parliamentary election in the Kumasi Metropolis and some voters claimed they got to the polling stations as early as 0200 hours.

When GNA got to the Pankrono Zongo Polling Station “A” of Pankrono Electoral Area of the Tafo-Pankrono Constituency of the Ashanti Region at 0555 hours, 241 voters were in a queue.

The Presiding Officer Wilberforce Boateng, who said he had received all the polling materials, was busy arranging them. He said there were 1,029 voters on the electoral roll.

Polling started promptly at 0700 but Mrs Lynn Opoku, the first voter, had a problem with verification.

The Presiding Officer asked her to sit down and wait. After a third attempt she was verified and was allowed to vote. The second voter, however, was quickly verified and was allowed to cast his vote.

Visually impaired Victor Owusu Appiah easily went through the process and his wife, Georgina Yeboah, also visually impaired, successfully cast her presidential vote but claimed she had a problem with the parliamentary ballot paper and voted for a candidate she did not intend to.

Four candidates are vying for the Tafo-Pankrono Parliamentary Seat. They are: Memuna Kabore Abu-Bakr Sadique of National Democratic Congress (NDC), Anthony Akoto Osei of New Patriotic Party (NPP), Faruk Mohammed Tankoh of Peoples’ National Convention (PNC) and Issah Abdul Salam of Convention Peoples’ Party (CPP).

However, only NDC and NPP polling agents were present. Both Abdul Jalil of NDC and Richard Appiah of NPP said they were satisfied with what was going on.

Tafo-Pankrono is one of the 47 constituencies in the Ashanti Region.

Some of the voters suggested that a way should be found to quicken the process.