I was alarmed by military presence in Parliament - Kan-Dapaah

The President’s nominee for the Minister of National Security, Albert Kan-Dapaah has said he was alarmed when armed military men invaded chamber during the election of the Leadership of the 8th Parliament.

He told the Parliament’s Appointment Committee he took the step to find out who ordered the military invasion as the incident shocked everyone including his colleagues in government.

His answer comes after James Agalga sought to find out what briefing the Minister-designate got with respect to who authorized the deployment of the troops in the parliamentary chamber.

On January 7, the election of the Leadership of the 8th Parliament degenerated into a full-blown crisis with armed military personnel storming the chamber of Parliament to restore order.

In a very dramatic low-point for Ghana’s democracy, the MPs-elect who had argued all night over the secret ballot protocol were visited in the chamber by about two dozen heavily-armed soldiers in addition to a similar number of armed police personnel.

However, in responding to these actions by the military men, Kan Dapaah told the committee “…It is a strange thing when you have a military team invade the parliamentary chamber. For whatever reason when I saw it, I was also alarmed and my colleagues in government was alarmed that it had happened. So, I did take the trouble to find out how it happened. It was that simple, somebody, a commander in his opinion thought that things were getting out of hand in the chamber and that he needed to go there to try to restore order.” he revealed

… So, I asked why? And what was his motivation for going there? I can only say this is something that shouldn’t have happened but no harm was caused to any member of parliament and let me agree with you that going forward this is not something we should encourage and hope that it doesn’t happen again.” He added.

He adds that investigation into the matter has begun awaiting a report.