Question Of Trust

Political party flagbearers and their running mates have been given a deadline to give details of their preferred bodyguards in the run-up to the November polls.

The deadline, it can be deduced, is informed by a seeming delay in the candidates responding to the police's request.

There have been suspicions on the part of the largest opposition party about the intentions of the law enforcement agency and its neutrality in the November polls.

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has various accounts about inexplicable security breaches at its headquarters and other places, which for want of space we are unable to lay out here. The law enforcement agency appears to have feigned ignorance about these developments, some of them parlous. Given the dexterity of the police, we cannot be convinced that they are unaware of some, if not all, of these security breaches.

Like bank accounts gone bad never to be recovered, it would seem that these cases have died never to be resurrected under the present political dispensation.

It is a fact that the law enforcement system has lost the confidence of not only the NPP, but many Ghanaians – something which must be worked upon if policing is to regain its lost glory.

Politicians have been at the base of it all, having always sought to direct the law enforcement system on what to do even when these are detrimental to the smooth operations of the agency.

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Countless examples exist to buttress this assertion: we ignore these at the peril of our country. If we continue on this tangent, it will not be long before we witness the repercussions of these moral deficiencies from state players.

Why would a DCE order a policeman to do something which is illegal, even when his commander to whom he is answerable is on the field, as it happened during the limited registration period?

When a cop does not feel safe to challenge a goofing politician whose party is in power, the journey to workable systems is light years away.

When policemen have to clutch the shoes of ministers as bodyguards having been virtually turned into houseboys, there is a problem.

When the Police Administration is not ready to stand by a cop who is being victimised simply because he did his job, such cops would lose confidence – a shortcoming which would impact negatively on their performance.

Polling station management is not the business of DCEs: cops on duty must be able to stand up to goofing representatives of the president in the districts in furtherance of their duties.

Unfortunately, COP Rose Bio Atenga recently differentiated between electoral laws and raw crimes in a manner which leaves much to be desired. For her, electoral laws are prerogatives of electoral officers and not the police. This explains why in some instances police personnel stand aloof as breaches are committed at polling stations. Could Commissioner of Police Rose have been briefed to do just that? Interesting times are ahead.