Special voting begins in Ashanti

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The special voting exercise took off smoothly at the scheduled time at all selected polling stations in Kumasi.

At the Kumasi Central police station in the Subin constituency, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP) Kwaku Ayesu Opare-Addo, joined teeming police personnel who had formed long queues to cast his vote at about 0930 hours.

Other high ranking officers also took turns to cast their votes at the same station.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency after casting his vote, DCOP Opare-Addo, expressed his satisfaction about the peaceful and orderly manner in which the men and officers were casting their votes and said that was a foreshadow of the main voting day on December 7.

Other personnel of the armed forces including Immigration, CEPS and Fire service were seeing waiting patiently in the queues for their turn to cast their vote.

Mr Asare Bediako, Presiding Officer at the station said it was only three parties; namely PNC, NDC and NPP who had their representatives around but stopped short of assigning any reason for the absence of other party representatives.

He said so far 241 males and 86 females had cast their votes as at 0930 hours since voting took off at 0700 hours.

At the Patasi Police Depot polling station in the Nhyiaeso constituency, the scenario was not much different as 55 personnel out of the expected 540 had cast their votes as at 0800 hours.

However, about 20 of them whose names were missing on the register were found standing around looking disappointed.

Mr Samuel Kwadwo Asante, Presiding/Returning Officer said electoral officers had been duly informed about the irregularity and on suspicion that the names might have been mixed up at other stations and they were making frantic efforts to go round all the stations to rectify the anomaly to enable the affected personnel vote by the close of polls.

At New Edubiase and Akrofoum constituencies in the Adansi South district in Ashanti, voting also took off peacefully.

A total of 226 persons are expected to cast their ballots at New Edubiase whilst 50 are voting at Akrofoum.

Mr Kingsley Larbi the District Electoral officer told the GNA at New Edubiase that so far no incident have been reported. He said all the political parties' polling agents are around to observe the voting.