Bryan Acheampong’s new appointment is affront to Emile Short Commission – Asiedu Nketia

The General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia, has asserted that moving Abetifi Member of Parliament (MP), Bryan Acheampong, from the Ministry of National Security to Interior is a “slap in the face of the Emile Short Commission.”

A communique signed by Eugene Arhin, the Director of Communication at the Jubilee House, in Accra yesterday, reassigned Mr Acheampong to the Ministry of Interior as a Minister of State with Henry Quartey, the Deputy Minister of the Interior going to Ministry of National Security as a Deputy Minister.

Mr Acheampong was indicted by the Justice Francis Emile Short Commission which probed the January 31, 2019, Ayawaso West by-election violence. 

The report recommended that Bryan Acheampong be sanctioned for assigning masked security operatives who unleashed violence on electorates believed to be members of the NDC. 

“The Commission recommends that Mr Bryan Acheampong be reprimanded for his ultimate responsibility as minister in authorising an operation of that character and on a day of an election in a built up area,”  the report said. 

Speaking, however with journalists in Parliament yesterday, Mr Nketia said the movement was a grand agenda to cause mayhem at the polls and to soften the ground to rig the December 7 elections.

“I believe that it is a cork in the whole orchestration to rig the elections. 

“What President Akufo-Addo has done is to tell the Emile Short Commission and any other person who is worried about vigilantism to go to hell. 

“This action is going to legitimise the conduct of Mr Bryan Acheampong and give him the legitimate authority to deploy the thugs they have trained and embedded in the Police Service for election security,” Mr Nketia stated. 

Election security, he said, was a mandate of the security structures, but that does not appear to be the case under the current regime. 

“This government has conducted itself in the security sector such that, the confidence Ghanaians have in the security to do their professional work has waned, because in an attempt to do their professional work, they suffer punishment,” he alleged.

In his view, the government does not believe that the December 7 polls can be won without violence or “underhand dealings.”

To be able to master the art of rigging the elections, Mr Nketia said the government masterminded the removal of the former Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Charlotte Osei and has staffed the Commission with its “stooges” to carry out that agenda.

The situation, the NDC chief scribe said, was worrying and called on Ghanaians to speak up as the elections approached.

BY JULIUS YAO PETETSI