A Security Analyst, Adam Bona says unresolved issues from the violence that characterized the Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election on January 31, 2019, may affect the 2020 general elections.
According to Mr Bonaa, enough measures have not been put in place by the Peace Council to address issues surrounding the Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election violence a year on.
He stated that victims of the violence have not been compensated a year after suffering various kinds of injuries also, perpetrators of the incident have been left unpunished.
Adding, with the Electoral Commission’s decision to compile a new voters’ register with political parties opposing in that regard, it is an indication of some kind of impending violence for the general elections in December 2020.
In an interview on Starr FM, today Mr Bonaa Adam Bonaa questioned efforts of the Peace Council in dealing with electoral violence a year after the Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election violence.
” Until such a time that these things are put together well it’s going to be difficult because its going to become , you do me, I do you and so the Peace Council if you should ask me where are they in regards to this whole conversation regards to of electoral violence in this country. I hadn’t heard about them one year on, what have they been doing? they haven’t done enough”.
”The victims have not been compensated, what are they saying about it and so these are things that if you ask me , looking at the tension that is brewing with regards to the electoral roll , if you ask me from where I stand I’ll tell you its a precursor to some kind of impending violence if we are not careful because the Ayawaso West Wuogon violence remains fresh in our minds and we want to have an electoral roll the EC wants to go ahead and register all of us again where the political parties are arguing and therefore if anything goes amidst what happens”?
”Tension is brewing up too much and I would have wished that the peace council should have by now resolved this issue about the Ayawaso West Wuogon, those who would have been compensated would have had their compensation , those who did wrong would have been punished. But we know the white paper rejected the substantial amount of the commission’s report by saying that Emil Short and his people deviated from the terms of condition given to them before they started their work.”
The Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election was to replace deceased Member of Parliament Emmanuel Kyeremateng Agyarko for the constituency who died in November 2018.
The by-election turned violent when security operatives fired gunshots into a crowd at Bawaleshie a suburb of Accra on January 31, 2019.
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Though there was no death recorded, there were casualties. Ningo Prampram MP, Sam Nartey George was assaulted whilst others were wounded by gunshots.
The government set up the Emile-Short Commission to investigate the incident and make recommendations on how to deal with electoral violence.
A month after the committee presented its report, the government rejected many of the recommendations on its white paper.
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