Police in Tema have arrested five stoutly built men (macho men) at the Datus polling station in the Tema Central Constituency for allegedly harrasing and intimidating voters.
According to the police, following complaints by the voters, they had to respond swiftly to have these men moved away from the polling station to enable the voters be in the right frame of mind to cast their ballot.
The Public Relations Officer of the Tema Regional Police Command, A.S.P Juliana Obeng, who confirmed the arrest of the said men, stated that the latter’s presence at the polling station was wrong in the first place as they are not registered voters in Tema.
“The voters felt uncomfortable to vote in the presence of the machomen. So we (police) got the patrol team to make sure that these people go off the place, reason being that these people are not registered voters of that polling station, nor registered voter here in Tema. Three of coming from Ashiaman and two from Accra. So then they do not belong anywhere to Tema. So then the question is, what were they doing there and that is why we got our men to get them off.”
She continued: “Information we’ve gathered so far indicate that these are people who had been brought in by one of the candidates whose name has still not come up, saying in the past election his counting wasn’t done properly so he’s brought these persons to help count properly. If that is even the case, we’re still in the voting process, we have still not gotten to the time for counting so in the first place what were they doing within the parameters. And why is it that when the police asked them to get off the area, they still came back. We moved in and got them arrested. We’re making sure that people have enough security to vote.”
