IT SEEMS the claim by the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) that a police officer was assaulted by an operative of National Security at the Prisons Polling Station during the Ayawaso West Wuogon Constituency by-election is untrue.
CODEO had immediately after the polls come out with its report, citing an assault on the said police officer.
The Electoral Commission disputed that claim, saying no police officer was assaulted at that polling station.
CODEO came out later to hold a press conference, insisting that its claim or report was factual.
Again, when she took her turn at the Justice Emile Short Commission of Inquiry probing the Ayawaso West Wuogon Constituency by-election shooting incident, in February, the Chairperson of the EC, Jean Mensa maintained the Electoral body’s earlier position that there was no police officer assaulted at that polling station.
But appearing before the Justice Short Commission on Tuesday, March 5, 2019, at the Osu Castle, a member of the CODEO/CDD Elections Team, Nana Kwabena Aborampah, failed to stand by the earlier report of assault.
When told by the lawyer of the Commission that there was a picture of a police officer with wound or cut who is reported to be the police officer CODEO was referring to, he claimed the CODEO observer who filed the report did not take picture.
He said on that the day there were two sets of security teams. One team, he said were in uniform and the other in normal clothes.
He stated that the team dressed in normal clothes were seated in the inner perimeters of the polling station while the uniformed personnel who were mostly police officers were at the entrance of the area.
According to him, a police officer called one member of the security team without to enquiry what they were doing there.
He said there was no fight as at that time but after a little while, other members of the team which has been said to be the national security arrived and asked why the police officers were asking their member.
He stated that caused a commotion and that CODEO’s observer and other people at the scene started running for cover.
The lawyer then put it to him that once the CODEO’s observer ran for cover, she did not see or witness the physical assault that was reported, to which he responded in the affirmative.
That was a sharp departure from CODEO’s initial report and shows that the EC was accurate in its report that there was just a misunderstanding but there was no physical assault or fault as claimed by CODEO initially.
BY Melvin Tarlue