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A former Minister for National Security, Mr Totobi Quakyi has criticized the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC) for responding inappropriately to some observations made by the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) after the Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election.

In an open letter to President Akufo-Addo, Totobi Quakyi said: “the indignation of your appointed Electoral Commissioner (sic) about the seriousness of the situation only serves to stoke the embers that we must hastily put out. 

"The conceitedness of her response evidences an astonishing degree of political immaturity, and her attempt to discredit the observations and valid concerns of the independent observers is truly unfortunate, unconscionable and unwise.”

CODEO after the by-election, indicated that the presence of armed security officials intimidated voters at the various polling stations.

According to the group of independent and non-partisan network of civil society groups, faith-based organizations and professional bodies, some polling stations had separate security teams from the Police, the Immigration Service and National Security.

Apart from that some polling stations also had 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”.

“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.

Even though CODEO did not accuse Madam Jean Mensa of causing the intimidation, she condemned their observation saying: “on the allegation of the 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 National Democratic Congress (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. In this respect, the Commission strongly dissociates itself from the alleged acts of violence that occurred at the La-Bawaleshie area,” she added.