A Deputy Communications Director, Richard Nyamah, has asked the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) to provide evidence to back their claim that masked security men were present at other polling centres and not only La Bawaleshie electoral area of the Ayawaso West Wuogon constituency.
His comment follows an initial peaceful by-election that turned bloody after chaos interrupted proceedings at the Bawaleshie electoral area in the Ayawaso West Wuogon constituency.
After the election which saw Madam Lydia Alhassan as the winner, CODEO indicated some polling stations had separate security teams from the Police, the Immigration Service and National Security.
Polling stations were also full of mobile patrol teams of security personnel “sometimes at short intervals of less than thirty minutes. Even more worrying was the presence of masked security operatives at polling stations, who could not easily be identified and thus could not be held accountable for any misconduct”.
CODEO also remarked that some non-uniformed security operatives displayed a lack of understanding of the electoral rules.
“At the Prisons JHS at Roman Ridge, for instance, security operatives who claimed to be National Security operatives positioned themselves next to polling officials and when a stationed uniformed police officer alerted them to move away from poll officials, a pick-up full of many more of the so-called security operatives descended on the police officer and attacked him for doing legitimate work” they added.
However, even though CODEO did not accuse the EC, Madam Jean Mensa says her commission cannot be blamed for the alleged violence that occurred.
She said: “on the allegation of a shooting incident at the La Bawaleshie area, the Commission rejects the attempts by the report of CODEO to link the Electoral Commission to the alleged incident at the private residence of the Parliamentary candidate of the NDC. The Commission wishes to state that the said shooting incident did not take place in any of the polling stations in the constituency and, therefore, did not in any way disrupt the conduct of the overall poll.”
Mr Nyamah speaking to the issue in a panel discussion on TV3’s programme; ‘The key point’ says if CODEO is able to provide videos or pictures, it will help in addressing the issue at hand.
Meanwhile, he has described the incident as “very unfortunate” and that “it could have been done better; without the mask and all that”
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