Lawyer urges police to shoot ballot box snatchers

A Tamale based Human Rights Lawyer, Issah Mahamodu has urged security forces to “shoot the legs” of persons who will tamper with ballot boxes in the upcoming 2016 general elections.

He says, the security must be firm and gun down miscreants who would attempt to snatch and flee with ballot boxes to deter others including their sponsors.

The lawyer has also charged the security force to deal ruthlessly with persons found engaged in electoral crimes.

Mr. Issah, the solicitor for the Andani Royal Family in Dagbon was speaking as Chairman of a Peace Stakeholder Dialogue held in Tamale, Northern Regional capital on Saturday.

“We will insist that the security forces should be firm, if you snatch a ballot box and you are running away and it means shooting your legs, they should fire you, so that ballot boxes would be protected. Ghana throughout our election processes have had independent volunteers and we have had party agents, so you, who is not part of the party agents and you are not part of the independent observers, what are you doing there? Are you going to snatch a ballot box and ran away?,’ he asked.

Lawyer Issah also accused the two main political parties in the region of arming their youth and vigilante groups with sophisticated weapons to cause aggression at some polling centres on voting day.

He told the youth that it was not their duty to stand guard at polling stations after casting their votes, and, therefore advised them to “turn down” weapons brought to them by the politicians.

“As you here what have you done that you think anybody coming to harm you that you need AK47 to harm protect yourself?…Our people say if you are in the market and they say catch catch him and you have done anything, would you ran? So please, no arms, no guns, no violence, no war; we are all one people”.