Commissioner of Police David Manning has said the first contingent - the Quick Response Force will be deployed for election operations on June 6, 2022.
The Police Commissioner said within the next week, mobilization of both Police and Military personnel to provinces around the country will begin working with communities, conducting awareness programs in preparation for the national elections.
“As I’ve always said, the security of the elections is very much everyone’s business. It’s not the sole responsibility of the government security forces to deliver a free, fair and safe election that is very much the responsibility of all our communities.
“Whether you are voting age or not, this is the future of our country that we dealing with and its incumbent on all of us. It’s all our responsibility to ensure that we do this in a lawful manner, as well as conduct ourselves during this campaign period in a lawful manner.”
Meantime, the Police Commissioner clarified that the destruction of political party properties such as flags, posters and other merchandise fall under election offences.
Manning said the Quick Response Force will be out in numbers working with communities to advocate on these issues.
“It goes without saying, the willful destruction of political party merchandise will definitely cause a situation where you’ll have supporters of political parties very much feeling anxious and aggravated by this deliberate, reckless actions and the indications are that can be potentially violent and so the QRF that’s gone out, it’s one of their responsibilities to ensure that this doesn’t happen. And we’ll do our best to tap down on this going into the polling period.
“You need to respect each other’s political affiliations, whether you support one political party or another or one candidate over another that does not give you any lawful reason to destroy each other’s merchandise.”