The Ghana Police Service has asked the two largest political parties, New Patriotic Party(NPP) and the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) not to interfere with their job.
According to the service, there are effective policing interventions to ensure law and order at all times including before, during and post-elections.
They, therefore, expect the political parties to support it by criticising it constructively to do a professional job in line with its constitutional mandate.
These were contained in a statement issued by the service following the meeting between the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Dr George Akuffo Dampare and the leadership of the two parties on Monday.
The meeting was necessitated by press statements issued by the parties and subsequently followed by petitions to the Police Service calling for the arrest of some individuals from both sides over inciteful comments.
“They should do their politics and allow the Police to do policing. We, therefore, called on them to support us including by criticising us constructively to do a professional job in line with our constitutional mandate.
“As we commend the leadership of the two political parties for availing themselves and contributing to the success of the meeting, we would like to call on Ghanaians to help us in our effort to build an independent Police service which will serve the greater good of the Ghanaian people and not the interest of any individual or group of people,” the statement read in parts.
The Police also briefed the parties on two strategic interventions introduced to handle the election and politically related incidents as part of the police transformation agenda.
They are the Police Election Security Secretariat which is to work with all political parties and other stakeholders to enhance the management of security for all elections in the country.
“Since its creation over a year ago, the Police Election Security Secretariat has worked with the various political parties in their respective internal elections from the polling station, through the constituency to the national executive elections. The Secretariat is currently working with both parties on their parliamentary and presidential primaries.”
“The second intervention is the setting up of a dedicated legal team to subject all politically related incidents to legal scrutiny to establish whether there are elements of crime or otherwise before any Police action is taken. The Police will therefore not intervene in any situation where there is no criminality involved,” the statement noted.
The Police further explained that, this is a paradigm shift from the practice in the past where people were arrested in the heat of the moment for politically related incidents as a result of attempts by politicians on either side to whip up public sentiments against the police thereby creating the impression that the Police supports one side against the other.
Meanwhile, the service has reiterated it remains committed to ensuring peace, security, law and order in the country at all times including before, during and after all elections in the country.
