Hawa Koomson Must Be Put into Context and Perspective

The warning shots that are widely alleged to have been fired by the Minister for Special Development Initiatives (SDI), Mavis Hawa Koomson, ought to be put into the proper narrative context before it can be fully appreciated. Putting the proverbial cart before the horse, as Prof. Kwesi Aning sought to inadvisably and predictably do, only makes a shero out of the New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for the Ewutu-Senya-East Constituency in the Central Region (See “Hawa Koomson a Disgrace to Ghana – Kwesi Aning” Modernghana.com 7/21/20). It is predictable because most Ghanaians who know the man are well aware of the fact that the Head of the Research Department at the world-famous Kofi Annan International Training Center is a bona fide member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), indisputably the most violent political party in the country.

Mrs. Hawa Koomson has already publicly acknowledged that, indeed, she fired some warning shots at one of the polling stations in her constituency because it was very early in the morning and she did not have her officially designated security detail on hand; plus, even more significantly and relevantly, as well, she felt that her life was in danger. And, indeed, there are several reports indicating that at least two other persons at the scene of Mrs. Hawa Koomson’s warning shots were arrested by some police officers for being in possession of firearms. So, it is quite reasonable to suppose or even assume that, indeed, the Minister’s life was in danger. Now, the general public has yet to be informed about the identities of these gun-toting individuals.

Where I find Mrs. Hawa Koomson to be in egregious breach of the law is the fact that this was at least the second time that she had been informed of the fact that some electoral or civic outsiders or nonresidents of her constituency had been bussed in from as relatively far off as Nsawam, in the Eastern Region, to be registered to vote in the Ewutu-Senya-East Constituency. What she ought to have done after she got wind of the first of such acts of patent criminality and electoral illegality or fraud, should have been for the incumbent parliamentarian of the constituency to have promptly lodged a complaint with the District Commander of the Ghana Police Service (GPS), to ensure that security personnel were posted in advance of the official opening of the illegally targeted polling stations, failure on the part of the personnel of the GPS to promptly respond of which could then have been justifiably used as a pretext for her purported vigilante behavior or action.

It is equally preposterous for Prof. Aning, of the Kofi Annan Center, to have so impulsively called Mrs. Hawa Koomson’s split-second decision to defend herself a “disgraceful act” to Ghana, when Prof. Aning was fully aware of the fact that even as yours truly writes this column, Mr. Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, the former Local Government Minister, and presently the National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress, is in court, together with some two or three other members of his party, charged with conspiring to set in motion a chain of seditious acts that were geared towards the violent and undemocratic overthrow of the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party. Now, that is what a real and true national disgrace looks like.

Calling for the severe sanctioning of the Special Development Initiatives Minister, including her forced resignation, before all the necessary and relevant facts of this incident have been gathered and forensically examined, is rather weak-minded on the part of Prof. Aning. But then, whoever said that Prof. Aning has ever been known for being a strong-minded and scholastically objective security expert, so-called?

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

July 22, 2020

E-mail: [email protected]