Flag bearers’ agents to police November 4 election

The various camps of the flagbearer hopefuls of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) are in talks to jointly police the November 4 election, the Campaign Coordinator of Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto’s Camp, Peter Oteng-Darko, has disclosed.

"Given what's going on, we expect some forces to align.

When we talk about alignment, we want to align in terms of the process.

"We want to bring our synergies together to police the process and not the candidates aligning to present one force," Mr Oteng-Darko explained in an interview with the Daily Graphic in Accra.

Aftermath of August 26

After the August 26 super delegates election, some of the candidates raised objections, pointing out some infractions during the election, such as some delegates showing their cast ballots before putting them into the ballot box, while others were intimidated.

Mr Oteng-Darko explained that unlike the August 26 super delegates voting where individual camps were raising various concerns, "for the November one, it will not be one person or one camp’s voice.

We are going to sing in unison."

He further said that meant having a collective force to police the election process.

Sheared responsibility

Mr Oteng-Darko acknowledged the role the police and other security agents played during elections, including the August 26 super delegates election, but said security at an election should not be ceded to only those deployed in uniform.

"Security is a shared responsibility and not for only the police.

That's why I said we will put our synergies together to police the process.

"We have a civil arrest.

As civilians, you can arrest and hand over to the police.

So, the training we gave for the August 26 election will be different from that of the November 4," he added.

Mr Oteng-Darko said the agents would be conscientised to ensure that the right thing was done at the various polling stations, and blamed the EC officials at some of the polling stations for helping to compromise the process.

He cited instances where EC officials were mentioning names and issuing multiple voting papers, thereby making them queue in front of the ballot box.

For Mr Oteng-Darko, that was a grand plan to force people to vote in a particular way, especially making sure that the one ahead showed his or her vote to the next person in the queue.

He said in every election, casting ballots had always been on a first come first serve basis and that the EC never mentioned names.

So, he wondered why in the super delegate elections, that was done.

Guidelines

Meanwhile, the party has released guidelines for the conduct of the November 4 election. Key among them is that the delegates would not be allowed to take phones to the voting perimeter, and it is an offence to take a picture of any vote or show any vote to any person or the public.