The flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama, has asserted that the police have effectively handed the Awutu Senya East parliamentary seat to the party’s candidate, Phillis Naa Koryoo Okunor, by arresting and detaining her in an attempt to intimidate her.

Mr Mahama criticised the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) government for what he described as acts of inequality and selective justice. 

He highlighted the incident where the current Awutu Senya East MP, Hawa Koomson, discharged a firearm at a voter registration center without facing repercussions, while Naa Koryoo was detained for legally possessing a firearm.

He accused the police of selectively applying their discretionary power of arrest, suggesting that their actions are politically motivated and unfair.

Despite these attempts at intimidation, Mr Mahama expressed confidence that Madam Okunor will win the parliamentary seat.

“The inequality and selective justice of this government are gullying, otherwise, how could Hawa Koomson, who fired a weapon at a registration centre and boasted about it, walk away free and a parliamentary candidate for Awutu Senya East is detained partly because the very police that issued her with a firearm’s license misspelt her name?” the former president said in a live broadcast on Sunday, June 9.

“If the government was seeking to break the spirit of Naa Koryoo with that politically organised arrest, they have rather handed over the Awutu Senya East parliamentary seat to the young woman, who by all standards towers over and above the incumbent," he said.