Leader of the People’s National Convention (PNC), Bernard Anbataayela Mornah, has raised alarm over the heavy presence of government operatives from Accra in the Akwatia constituency, suggesting that their deployment is both unnecessary and disruptive to the local electoral environment.

Speaking on JoyNews during a panel discussion on the ongoing election, Mr Mornah expressed concern that while Accra faces mounting urban challenges including uncollected waste and malfunctioning street lights, government attention appears to have shifted wholesale to Akwatia.

“I just watched the portion where the people from Accra are in Akwatia. They have work to do in Accra: lots of filth and lots of streetlights are not working. There’s so much for the AMA to do, and yet it appears that the entire government machinery is in Akwatia,” he remarked.

Mr Mornah questioned the relevance of these officials in Akwatia, especially given that many of them do not reside in the constituency and are ineligible to vote there.

According to him, their prolonged presence, reportedly spanning more than four days, is contributing to growing tensions in what should otherwise be a local electoral process.

“They do not have the power to vote. They have been staying there for more than four days, as I am told. It is the presence of people who are actually of no use to the constituency that is fomenting the trouble,” he added.

He further noted that reports of violence and disturbances in identified electoral hotspots were largely linked to individuals who, in his view, have no legitimate stake in the affairs of Akwatia.

“If you listen to the people around the hotspots, the people surrounding this violence are people without any benefit to Akwatia.”

While Mr Mornah acknowledged that no election is likely to be entirely incident-free, he criticised the current situation as inconsistent with the standards expected of Ghana’s democratic maturity.

“I am not so much impressed by some of the disgusting situations, but generally speaking, I think that everything is going on well. There is certainly no doubt that in any election we cannot expect a 100 percent incident-free process. But with our democracy at this stage, I do not think that what we are witnessing should in any way happen,” he concluded.