The Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) has agreed that security around elections should be the key responsibility of the Ghana Police Service.
At the last two-day IPAC meeting held at the Alisa Hotel in Accra, the chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Jean Mensa, noted that the responsibility of ensuring security during elections had not been well defined, hence the Commission had wrongly been blamed for the violence that have occurred.
She said: “Ensuring security is not the responsibility of the Electoral Commission. We collaborate with security agencies in their quest to carry out their responsibility in ensuring peace, security, law and order at all centres throughout the country.
“And indeed we initiated the collaboration with the security agencies under the national elections security task force as early as 2019, to assist the police in carrying our their responsibility.
“We need to define clearly without a shred of doubt whose responsibility it is to guarantee security on election day and to place the responsibility on their shoulders.”
In effect, IPAC at the end of the meeting, agreed that that responsibility should be the Ghana Police Service’s.
The committee also agreed that the Police Service, following the incidents of voilence that have been recorded during the elections, should provide updates on them.
In all, seven deaths were recorded while many others were left severely injured in the violence that occurred at five polling stations.
Having tasked the Police service to provide updates, Ms Jean Mensa urged the service to expidite the investigation and to bring the perpetrators of the violence to book, adding that “the families of the victims, the people of Ghana and indeed the international community wait for justice to be done.”
