President of the Institute for Security and Disaster Management Studies, Dr. Ishmael Norman, has urged the ad hoc committee investigating the leaked tape concerning the ousting of the IGP to have all their sessions in public.

According to him, any in-camera session will not be favourable for probity and accountability purposes and will generate some level of mistrust of the entire process.

He explained that the public has a right to know the level of decay in the police force and what is being done to remedy the situation, as the service was set up for the people.

He said in-camera sessions would provide an avenue for people to speculate and this will give rise to conspiracy theories that may be very injurious to the image of the police force.

Meanwhile, Dr. Norman also supports the idea that the IGP, George Akuffo Dampare, be investigated as well, “I totally recommend that, and I support that [investigating the IGP]. The only thing I don’t like about the decision that the committee has taken is to do in-camera sessions.

“Look, everybody in Ghana knows the police system has a problem, and the people complaining are people who should know or should have known. Therefore if you go behind the camera we will already now suppose that this is what is happening there, this is what is happening there, and it’s going to create conspiracy theories about what is happening.

“It is not good. Let the people know what is happening because it is the people’s service, not the government’s service. We pay for Dampare’s salary; we pay for the police officer’s salary.”

He rubbished the national security justification for the in-camera sessions.

According to him, the identity politics at play in the police system is a bigger national security problem than whatever may be revealed at the hearings.

“What national security problem could that be? Already the police service is compromised in a deep systemic way, NPP, NDC and it’s just not the police service. It is almost every institution in Ghana.

“So this is a tip of the iceberg of all that is wrong with Ghana because of identity politics…and it is a very systemic and destabilizing effect in Ghana,” he said.