Police have stopped the chairman of the People’s National Convention (PNC), Bernard Mornah, and scores of his supporters from reaching the Police Headquarters in Accra.
The supporters, most of whom were clad in red were marching alongside Mornah to the Police Headquarters, where the latter is expected to honour an invitation from the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) over comments he made regarding the planned compilation of a new voters’ register.
Some armed police personnel stopped the group at the traffic lights near the Police Headquarters to block them from proceeding to the premises.
An internal police memo seen by Citi News suggested that the police had anticipated a crowd of that size accompanying the PNC chairman to the police head office. They therefore deployed a special security team to the area to ensure public order.
Mornah and his lawyers have since been allowed into the premises of Police Headquarters after the temporary hold-up.
Proceeding with caution
On Thursday 28 May 2020, CID issued the invitation to the PNC national chairman, who is quoted as having said that he will resist every attempt by the EC to compile a new voters’ register.
“People who are already Ghanaians and already registered are going to be taken out of the voters’ register. Don’t think confusion will come at the registration station but if confusion comes there, you think the EC staff will be safe?
“We will beat each other there and we will kill each other there if that is what the EC wants to lead this nation to,” Mornah is quoted to have said at a press conference organised by the Inter-Party Resistance Against New Register (IPRAN) on 26 May.
But in an earlier interview on Citis Eyewitness News, Mornah said he does not see anything threatening about his comments.
According to him, the comment at the heart of the dispute was merely advice to the Electoral Commission against compiling a new register before Election 2020.
“I have said that if the Electoral Commission is intending to lead us through this dangerous path [sic], they should know that there will be confusion . . . It is a caution. If caution becomes threats, I will not run away from it,” he said.
“A caution cannot represent a threat but if they take it as a threat, then I may have to bring my English teacher to tell them that cautions are not threats.”
He further emphasised his view that Ghanaians must not condone the Electoral Commission’s posturing regarding the compilation of the new voters’ register.
“The EC is slitting our democracy and we must do everything to resist it and we will resist it,” Mornah said.
“There is nothing that will allow you to sit down and allow this EC to slit our democracy away from the peace and stability that we have enjoyed.
“So when we are telling them and alerting them that their actions can lead us unto a perilous path [sic] and you say we are threatening, I don’t know. I will visit the CID,” he said.
