Pru Constituency People Want Fresh Polls

The people of the Pru Constituency in the Brong Ahafo Region have called for fresh elections in the area to enable them to get a representative in Parliament. They contended that unless this was done, they might not get an MP to represent them in Parliament when it resumed for business early next year.

The call followed the inability of the Electoral Commission to declare results of the presidential and parliamentary elections conducted in the constituency last Tuesday. An irate mob besieged the centre on Wednesday and burnt the entire electoral materials.Briefing newsmen in Sunyani yesterday, Mr George Boboase,the Pru Constituency Presiding Officer said around 3 p.m. on Wednesday when the electoral officials were busily collating the results at the Yeji Day Secondary School in order to declare them, a mob numbering more than 1,000 besieged the centre and vandalised the place without any cause.

He said the mob forcibly collected all the electoral materials, including the ballot boxes containing the cast ballot papers from all the 107 polling stations in the constituency, which were being collated and set them ablaze in the presence of security agents and representatives of the political parties.

According to Mr Boboase, the 15 security personnel comprising policemen and soldiers, fired a number of warning shots to scare the mob but that did not work. He stated that the results of the election at each of the 107 polling stations.Mr Boboase said he did not understand why the mob took that action because the polls had been peaceful in all the polling centres.

The Returning Officer, however, attributed the cause of the disturbances to ethnicity, explaining that three strong parliamentary candidates who contested the election were from three different powerful traditional areas in the constituency.When the Regional Director of the EC, Mr Amadu Sulley, was contacted on the issue, he said his outfit would collect individual polling station results, collate them and use them to declare the results.

He said the issue of the ballot boxes was not relevant but that the individual declared results at polling stations signed by the agents of the participating political parties would be collected and used in declaring the results.When the new Regional Police Commander, Mr Yaw Adu-Gyamfi was contacted on the issue, he said he had despatched police reinforcement to Yeji to maintain law and order.