It has emerged that the parliamentary candidate of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) for the Ayawaso West Wuogon, Delali Kwasi Brempong had about 50 heavily built men known in local parlance as ‘machomen’ in his house during the bye-election.
The Accra Regional Operations Director of the Ghana Police Service, DSP Kwasi Ofori, made the revelation yesterday when he appeared before the Justice Francis Emile Short Commission of Inquiry that is looking into the January 31 bye-election violence.
He told the commission that when the police arrived at the NDC candidate’s house at La Bawaleshie in East Legon, he said he didn’t need any police protection and told them that he was comfortable with the macho people around him.
Interestingly, the Operations Director said the NDC candidate had told him that he did not know the 50 people who were inside his house and estimated that about 100 people were also outside the house which appeared to be the epicenter of the violence.
Nearly a month since the bye-election shooting incident, a supposed chief of Waala is still reportedly in possession of unspecified quantities of empty ammunition shells he is alleged to have collected from the crime scene.
The Police chief told the commission that he had detailed officers to visit the chief whom he said resides at Agbogbloshie, a suburb of Accra, to retrieve the shells.
Bizarrely, he told the Commission that the chief is someone he knows personally and has interacted with on a number of occasions but did not know his name.
He told the Commission that the Crime Officer at East Legon did not brief him about the chief having the shells in his possession nor did she tell him also about the fact that two school kids from the La Bawaleshie Presbyterian Junior High School picked up two empty shells during the violence and submitted them to the police.
Political Vigilantism
The Operations Director told the commission that political interference in the activities of the police is allowing vigilantism associated with political activities to grow.
He said that anytime a police officer effect an arrest of a vigilante, they were pressured by politicians to release them.
BY Melvin Tarlue