Three members of the pro-democracy pressure group, Let My Vote Count Alliance (LMVCA), Sammi Awuku, Abu Ramadan and James Kwabena Bomfeh popularly called Kabila, were yesterday granted bail after the Madina Police threatened to lock them up.
Sources said two of them, Sammi Awuku and Abu Ramadan, would be charged for violating the Public Order Act, and are to report to the Police on Thursday.
The three men, together with other members of the group, had honored an invitation by the police at Madina over a rally they organized somewhere last week Sunday at Taifa in the Dome Kwabenya constituency.
Interestingly, members of the group who were not at the maiden rally at Norway Park at Dome in Accra, upon which the police were interrogating the group, were also penciled down for arrest.
Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, lawyer for the group, who accompanied them to the police station, had a tough time with the police, taking them through the law and explaining that the members did not violate any law to necessitate the invitation.
He said the caution statement presupposed that they had committed an offence or breached the law, but in the end they wrote the statement.
One member of the group who happened to be a member of the Communications team of the National Democratic Party (NDP), Ernest Owusu Bempah, kept his promise not to honour the invitation since he had not been formally invited.
Even before they arrived at the police station, scores of supporters of the Let My Vote Count campaigners had besieged the place to give them moral support.
They were accompanied by Nana Attobrah, David Asante, Charles Owusu and a host of other members of the group.
What seemed to have surprised most, including lawyers for the group Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko and Mike Oquaye Jnr, was the police’s insistence that they give written statements and a bail subsequently.
An obviously bemused Gabby Otchere-Darko remarked, “We are not too sure what is happening; they had people on the list they were supposed to question, people who were not even there. All the members of the group came there and they decided to look at three faces and they decided that the three people should come and write a statement.”
Even though the people were made to write caution statements, Gabby insisted they were not arrested.
Twist And Turns
Leader of the group, Sammi Awuku who spoke to DAILY GUIDE after meeting with the Madina District Police Commander, Chief Superintendent Fosu Arkaah, said the police claimed the event they held at the Norway Park in Dome caused heavy vehicular traffic and apart from that they also failed to notify them to detail their men to control the situation.
Mr Awuku, who is a Deputy Communications Director of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), was not enthused about the fact that the police could not read out charges to them, but offered to grant them bail without any strings attached.
The group suspected that some powerful forces might be behind their ordeal with the police.
“They weren’t specific. They told us that they will tell us later. Then they also said they had orders from above with a list of names of persons that they should call. That list included myself, Abu, Kabila, Owusu Bempah and Atik,” he noted.
Interestingly, Atik Mohammed of the People’s National Convention (PNC) and his colleague James Kwabena Bomfeh of the Convention People’s Party (CPP) were said to be nowhere near the function in question on the said date.
In view of this, Mr Otchere-Darko told DAILY GUIDE, “it seems to me that a lot of pressure is being brought on the police to somehow muscle this Let My Vote Count.”
Let My Vote Count
Gabby disclosed, “I see this organization as a necessary window to allow the ventilation of pent-up feelings that people have and to try to shut that window will perhaps even cause more problems than they anticipated so it is important that the young people behind this group are allowed to do things and do it lawfully.
“Those who are trying to push the police to do these things should calm down and allow these young people who are frustrated and unhappy with the electoral system to find a legitimate means of venting their spleen.”
But for the presence and help of the supporters who had gathered there, the Madina branch of the First Allied Bank would have been razed down by a fire that started in the building next to the police station.
Even before officers and men of the Fire Service arrived at the scene, the supporters, together with others, had managed to douse the flame.
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