-Owusu Bempah Tells Police
Ernest Owusu Bempah
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
It follows a supposed invitation extended to some leading members of the Let My Vote Count Alliance (LMVCA) by the Madina police.
Deputy Communications Director of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Sammi Awuku, claimed to have received a call from the Madina District Police Commander on Wednesday, asking him to come along with leading members of the group including Owusu Bempah, James Kwabena Bonfeh of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP), Abu Ramadan of the People’s National Convention (PNC) and Charles Owusu of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), to answer certain questions pertaining to a rally they held over the weekend.
But speaking on Oman FM’s ‘National Agenda’ morning show yesterday, an obviously angry Owusu Bempah said, “Me as an individual, I will not go.”
“I am not going anywhere; let them come and arrest me,” he said, asking, “What have I done?”
Basis
According to him, he had not received any official invitation from the police either by phone or formal letter.
“If we are organizing a programme dubbed ‘Let My Vote Count’ and my friends invite me and my party also believes our votes are missing and I go to speak at the event on behalf of my flagbearer and my party, what has that got to do with the police?” he quizzed, insisting, “If the Madina police want to invite me, they should formally write to my flagbearer or my party general secretary and if they give the permission, I will come but now I’m not coming anywhere.”
The man nicknamed ‘Billy Goat emphasised, “I won’t go”, whilst asking rhetorically, “What I’m going to do there?”
He claimed to have only heard of the supposed invitation on radio and that nobody had sent him invitation either through the phone or an official letter, insisting, “That is not the procedure for the police to invite anybody to come.”
Owusu Bempah wondered, “What has the Madina Police got to do with it when somebody has gone to speak”, adding that even before his arrest and subsequent detention by officials of the Bureau of National Investigations last year, they called him on the phone to invite him even though he demanded an official letter before he went.
The Odds
“This time round, it’s not as if you will be sitting somewhere and somebody tells you, ‘you have been invited’ (by the police) and you get up and pick your bag and go to the Madina Police station; I don’t do my things like that so I’m not going because I don’t have an issue with anybody there,” he emphasized.
For him, these were some of the things that increased tension in the country, wondering what the police and the security agencies did when a leading member of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), Kakra Essamuah, said on Asempa FM that he would do or support a coup d’état should the Supreme Court rule in favour of the NPP’s Nana Akufo-Addo in the ongoing trial.
In spite of making that treacherous statement, Owusu-Bempah said, “he (Kakra Essamuah) is walking about freely”, wondering what had also become of the infamous ‘Yaw Boateng Gyan tape’ in which the national organiser of the ruling NDC was heard hatching a plot with some party faithful of his intentions to use some NDC boys as agents of the National Security to intimidate people during the elections.
“Up till date, have you heard that any of the security agencies has invited him?” he asked, emphasizing, “As for me, I will not go and I’m saying it that if they want they should come and pick me up like a fowl.”
He stated, “We are not living in elected dictatorship; we are not living in a jungle warfare”, stressing, “We are living in a sovereign state where human right is very very important.”
“If these things continue to go on, it’s too volatile and too fragile for this country,” he noted.