The Member of Parliament for Manhyia has confessed to urging his supporters to arm themselves against persons alleged to have been hatching a plot to disrupt the 2008 elections in Manhyia. Matthew Opoku-Prempeh said he asked his "people" to wield sticks and other objects to chase out anyone who would have attempted to rig the elections in constituency. The MP dismisses suggestions his call amounted to inciting the electorate in the New Patriotic Party (NPP) stronghold to cause violence. “During the second round [of the 2008 elections] I got credible information that people were going to steal ballot boxes in my peripheral areas. Do you know what I did? I made a car go round and say nobody who goes to vote should go back home. They should stand there with cudgels and sticks; if anybody comes there and attempts to take a ballot box, they should deal with the person,” Mr Opoku-Prempeh told Kwaku Sakyi Addo, host of Joy FM’s news analysis programme Newsfile. “…precisely because what have we found in this country? Policemen who are going to police ballot boxes are not armed.” Mr Opoku-Prempeh’s confession follows reports that most of the 1200 policemen deployed to provide security at the recent by-election at Atiwa in the Eastern Region were not armed. Reports were rife that busloads of heavily-built men combed through the constituency and brutalized some electorate with impunity while the police looked on. The Coalition of Domestic Observers (CODEO) has said the by-election in the Eastern Regional town was punctuated with several violent incidents most of which was avoidable. Meanwhile the Public Affairs Directorate of the Ghana Police Service has justified the decision not to arm policemen who provided security at Atiwa. Director DSP Kwesi Ofori told Kwaku Sakyi Addo the decision was consistent with the “democratic policing philosophy” of the service rooted in the convention not to adopt a high-handed approach to ensuring violence. The explanation of the police notwithstanding, Kojo Asante, Acting Coordinator of CODEO which has published its findings on the by-election, said the police must up their game in subsequent elections to ensure they are incident-free. Story by Fiifi Koomson/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana