<<Print>>

The Member of Parliament for Tamale Central, Alhaji Inusah Fuseini has descended on the Electoral Commission and its boss, Madam Jean Mensa for giving an ‘immature and infantile’ response to the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO).

Speaking on a panel discussion on TV3’s programme; ‘The Key Point’, Alhaji Fuseini said if the EC disagreed with CODEO “you don’t totally dismiss outrightly especially in the face of the overwhelming evidence confronting us. Madam Jean Mensa should sit and analyse . . . She should take criticisms in good faith and improve".

Speaking generally on happenings that marred the by-election in the Ayawaso West Wuogon constituency, Alhaji Fuseini said “no matter how you paint the picture, the truth will emerge".

According to him, “no one will accept that these masked people were brought there not to intimidate people to vote”.

“What happened strikes at the very core of our democracy; respect for the rule of law. Impunity should not be the order of the day. People cannot act with such levels of impunity and go scot free,” he added.

CODEO and EC

CODEO indicated that some polling stations had separate security teams from the Police, the Immigration Service and National Security.

According to them, 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”.

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.”