‘Do Your Politics And Allow The Police To Do Policing’; Dampare Tells NPP & NDC

The Inspector-General of Police, Dr George Akufo Dampare, has urged the two major political parties in the country to provide the Police Service the room to deliver on its mandate.

This was during a meeting with the leadership of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Monday, April 17.

The meeting comes after the two parties petitioned the Service to arrest key officials from each side over comments described as “treasonable”.

Petitions
Following the Minister for Food and Agriculture, Bryan Acheampong’s statement that the NPP was not going to hand over power to the NDC in 2025, the latter petitioned the CID on April 11 to arrest the former.

The NPP retaliated with another petition to the CID for the arrest of former President John Dramani Mahama and National Chairman of the NDC, Johnson Asiedu Nketia for similar comments they’ve made.

The ruling party referenced the “boot-for-boot” and “do-or-die” comments of Mr Mahama and Hon Asiedu Nketia’s reported assertion that the 2024 General Election will be “bloody”.

Meeting With Police
At the meeting with the Police on Monday, the parties were allowed to air their grievances which boiled down to disturbing comments by some key political actors from both sides.

The parties received a lecture on the reviewed strategy in going about such development.

They were informed about the legal team set up to review such comments to ascertain the level of criminality before subsequent steps are taken.

The police explained that this is to move from the practice in the past where the police acted in the heat of the moment creating impressions that the Service was a poodle of a particular party.

“This is a paradigm shift from practice in the past where people were arrested in the heat of the moment for politically related incidents as a result of attempts y politicians on either side to whip up public sentiments against the police thereby creating the impression that the police support one side against the other.

“In such instances where no concrete charges can be levelled against such people, they are released thereby creating the impression in the public domain as though the police were manipulated in effecting their arrests”, a statement from the police on Monday said.

The police, therefore, urged the parties to focus on their politics whereas it undertakes its mandate.

“They should do their politics and allow the police to do policing.”