Member of Parliament for Adansi-Asokwa in the Ashanti Region K.T Hammond says he will not apologize for his ‘Ketu South Togolese’ comments.
K.T Hammond said he does not regret because all he stated were facts and that means he owes no one an apology.
He also said there is a clear agenda to twist his comments which the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) criticised as ethnocentric.
In a video that has gone viral, the MP justified the military deployment to the Volta Region saying it is to stop foreigners from coming into the country to participate in the voters registration exercise.
This has infuriated natives of the region and the NDC but he says he will not apologize for saying that because there is a calculated agenda against him.
“Everything being said is just calculated at damaging me and it is like what I said is abominable, I don’t understand. I don’t regret what I said because I was stating the facts that people from Togo come in, Togolese are not Ghanaians unless you have another definition of who a Ghanaian is,” he told Joy News.
Background
Mr Hammond speaking to the media last week on why there is an influx of military men in the Volta Region said: “The Togolese and the Voltarians – when I talk about Voltarians, the Volta Region – remember the history … basically the same tribe, so, they walk into [Ghana] but they are not Ghanaians”.
“When they walk in there, they can do whatever they [want], so, I guess that is the reason for that [military influx]”.
“There is a classic example”, he recalled. “You remember 2008, the second round; we had so much – 100,000 or so votes leading Prof Mills at the time of the second round. In the next round, one constituency, Ketu South, cleared all the [votes] we had. Where did they come from?” he asked.
“You see, so, everybody from wherever they came to vote, so, this is what the whole thing is about; 35,000 people at the time voted; the next one, everybody on earth voted there; where were they coming from?
“So, this is the whole issue: we want there to be sanity”, he added, noting: “The military is there to make sure that you vote if you are a Ghanaian, you vote if you have the constitutional right to vote; that’s all there is to it”, he said.
“They [military personnel] are not electoral officers, but they are a peacekeeping force … So, the soldiers, the police and immigration are just maintaining the peace, making sure there’s no infiltration. I mean, come on, let’s be serious; what’s the point in going through all that we’ve gone through, to the Supreme Court and all that then allow a porous border for people to come through and then infiltrate the register again? We would have been back to where we started”.
His position has however been brushed off by the government who have stated categorically that the military are just there to protect the borders to stop people from illegally entering the country.
The voters registration exercise will begin today June 30, 2020.
