Pressure group, OccupyGhana, is demanding that a full-scale investigation is conducted urgently into the shooting incident at a voter registration center at Kasoa involving a minister of state.
The Special Development Initiatives Minister and Awutu Senya East MP, Mrs. Hawa Koomson has admitted to firing gunshots at the Steps to Christ registration centre during a melee, saying she felt threatened.
But the group believes the action of the minister has rather endangered the lives of innocent citizens.
The pressure group said it received the news about the shooting incident with “grave concern”.
“We call on the police to quickly investigate the circumstances under which this incident occurred. If it is found that the Minister breached the law, she should be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible under the law,” OccupyGhana said in a statement on Tuesday.
Recalling the bloody Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election violence, the statement notes that the use of unjustifiable force or violence is a crime. “Specifically, it is a crime to fire a weapon ‘in a town without lawful and necessary occasion.’ Possession of a firearm ‘without lawful excuse’ is a first-degree felony.
“And it is also a crime to have an offensive weapon while in a public place, public meeting, or at a public assembly of people, ‘without lawful authority.’”
OccupyGhana further “condemned the inexplicable circumstances under which the Minister took a loaded weapon to the registration centre in the first place, when the Minister has police guard, paid for by the state and whose job is to protect her.”
It has therefore implored all to respect the electoral laws and make good use of the EC’s Challenge Form to stop ineligible people from getting registered.
“What the Minister did endangered the lives of not only the political actors, but innocent people whose only interest in being at the registration centre, was ostensibly to exercise their constitutional right to be registered and to vote in the coming elections.”
Read: Hawa Koomson admits firing gunshots at registration centre as EC condemns such acts
