Police will address polling irregularities - IGP

The Ghana Police Service has set up elections monitoring team to go round polling stations to address complaints of irregularities on voting day.

Complaint forms will be made available at polling stations for persons with reservations about the conduct of the polls to fill and hand over to members of the team, made up of police personnel who have been trained for that purpose.

Mr Peter Nanfuri, Ghanaian Inspector General of Police (IGP) announced this on Thursday at a meeting with Editors and Senior Journalists in Accra. The meeting had been preceded by a similar one with the political party leadership to find common grounds for the maintenance of peace in the run-up to the elections on December 7.

Nanfuri said all policemen would be on duty that day, for which reason holiday leave has been cancelled while those already on leave have been recalled. He stressed the need to avoid the "pitiful spectacle of political violence" that has gripped other African countries and appealed for "good behaviour in the name of love for the country."

Nanfuri identified the photo identity card issue as a factor likely to cause confusion in the elections and said he hopes the Electoral Commission would urgently address complaints arising from it before polling day. He said statements from people denied ID cards indicate that they are determined to do anything possible to exercise their franchise.

On calls for the Police to investigate allegations by Alhaji Issaka Inussah, a leading member of the NDC, that the NPP rigged the Ablekuma Central bye-election, Mr Nanfuri said the police would act only after it received a written statement.

Describing the allegation as "political talk", he asked Alhaji Innusah, the NPP or any citizen to come forward and complain formally to the police. "NPP should not just ask us to investigate, they should come and tell us in writing what we should investigate," he stressed.

He said the police have three principal modes of accessing information -- through the media, tip-offs and through the police own internal systems, including patrols and intelligence network.

The journalists drew the IGP's attention to the contradiction between the stand of the police on the Innusah issue and the arrest of a man who claimed on television that he was the brain behind the recent serial murder of women.

This dragged the issue for some time but the IGP stuck to his guns, saying, the police undertake investigations based on formal complaints. He said it is not that the police are reluctant to investigate the matter but that they have difficulties in getting the facts, which are "ingredients of crime needed for investigation".

Nanfuri advised the media to desist from to publishing misleading and inflammatory matters that may "lead the police into the pitfall of embarking upon the adventure of hasty arrests that could lead to instability and insecurity". He said the police would welcome credible information on people whose conduct has the potential of destabilising the country.