Hordes of retired commandos who served in the erstwhile 64 Infantry Regiment and perceived to owe allegiance to former President Rawlings, are trickling into Ghana and taking strategic positions with the aim of serving as bodyguards and polling agents for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) before and during the December polls, DAILY GUIDE has learnt.
The development follows reports that Jerry Rawlings had started holding meetings With people who held security positions under his government, in addition to inciting NDC supporters.
One of such ex-servicemen is the second-in-command in Professor Atta Mills's security team, who pitched his strength against President Kufuor's guards at Cape Coast recently and paid dearly for it.
Even though NDC officials gave the name of the commando as Emmanuel Ewusi aka Angola, Daily Guide intelligence reports indicate that the commando-turned bodyguard is known and called ex-Sgt. Emmanuel Yao Huze.
Angola joined scores of former combatants who went on premature retirement from the elite Unit 64 when the NDC lost power in 2000.
"Some of Huze's colleagues who accepted to be re-oriented into the regular army are now Warrant Officers at Takoradi and are doing well," a source said.
The soldier, who hails from Afiadenyigba near Dzodze in the Ketu North District of the Volta Region, declined to be absorbed into the regular army when his unit was disbanded, and opted for retirement.
He was spotted among the former President's personal guards in the run-up to the 2004 general elections but vanished soon after the NDC lost that election.
After leaving the army, ex-sergeant Huze was reportedly sent on certain assignments in Brazil, Brunei and Equatorial Guinea, before returning to the country with a number of his colleagues two months ago.
While in the 64 Battalion in the late I990s, Huze stayed in a Commando quarters at the Awudome Estates in Accra and had a stint of further training at the 64 Battalion of Infantry in Tamale before being listed for a foreign mission.
The quarters, the paper gathered, was the seized property of the late Siaw ofTata Brewery fame.
Other ex-commandos who are still armed and served mostly as a private army for former President Rawlings and other NDC functionaries are regrouping and taking vantage positions in the 10 regions as they maintain constant communication with their godfather - Jerry Rawlings.
Party insiders say they would be used as polling agents and electoral monitors for the NDC on December 7 and they are already communicating and strategizing among themselves.
During the numerous demonstrations by the NDC and its allies, remnants of the commandos were used as security units.
It would be recalled that Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, a Deputy General Secretary of the party, once threatened to unleash the commandos on Ghanaians, when the police prevented the party from going on a demonstration. He later ate his words when he was pelted with an avalanche of condemnations.
It is feared that considering the allegiance of the commandos to the former President and the fact that they still have sophisticated weapons in their possession, their presence at polling stations may become an issue of security concern during the polls.
Throughout the recently held voter registration exercise, there were reports that many armed civilians besieged the registration centres to create problems and intimidate people.
Interestingly, a suggestion from the Ghana Police that security personnel should be armed on voting day had not gone down well with the NDC.
Reports say in the last two months, many of the Rawlings commandos have not only returned to Ghana, but have been communicating frequently and planning on how best to help the NDC win the December polls or ensure that the party is treated fairly during the polls.
The 64 Battalion comprised a fine selection of the best brains of ultra-Rawlings-loyalists who were hand-picked and sent to Cuba for an advanced military training in guerilla warfare soon after the 1981 military coup which was disguised as a revolution.
On their return to Ghana, they were rated higher than the mainstream Ghana Army and were better armoured, better-resourced, better-fed and better-housed.
During the Rawlings-led government, many of them did not stay in military barracks but took up comfortable residence in houses confiscated by the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) including Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia's house at Odorkor and the GNTC flats at Kanda Estates, both in Accra.
Another of their preoccupation was intelligence gathering as it came an open secret that many of them acted as taxi drivers to gather information by engaging unsuspecting passengers in conversations on political issues.
It would be recalled that the NDC Deputy National Organiser, Yaw Boateng Gyan, in a recent bravado comment said among other things: "We are serving notice to the NPP that we are more than ready to stand toe-to-toe with them and slug it out if that is what they want".
