Nana Akufo-Addo has condemned last Wednesday’s police brutal action on the Let My Vote Count demonstrators and described it as shameful.
“This peaceful demonstration was turned by the police into a bloody affair – water cannons, tear gas, rubber bullets. It is a great shame on our country, and it is a tragedy for Ghana,” he said in Bolgatanga during a two-day tour of the Upper East Region yesterday.
He emphasised, “The democratic gains that our people have made, they are not going back. We are not going back on democracy. We are not going back to police rule in Ghana. We are not going back to one-man rule.”
The remarks were his first reaction to the brutal assault meted out by officers of the Ghana Police Service against unarmed civilians who had embarked on a demonstration organised by some pressure groups in Accra on Wednesday, September 16.
“We are determined to continue down the path of democratic engagement and an open society where its citizens can go about their work peacefully. Brute force by the police against unarmed citizens exercising their constitutional rights should be a thing of the past,” he stated.
In the wake of this unprovoked attack, Nana Akufo-Addo stated, “I believe the president of the Republic is duty-bound to establish a commission of enquiry to go into the events of yesterday (Wednesday); into how come the police behaved the way that they did, and make the appropriate recommendations.”
The NPP flagbearer further called on Ghanaians to follow the example of the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu, who is asking all Ghanaians to be heard on the matter of the need for a new voter register “so it becomes clear what the people want.”
The NPP, according to Nana Akufo-Addo, was asking for a new voter register because “It will strengthen the credibility of the electoral system and therefore make the outcome of any election easy for people to accept. It is the best way of consolidating and guaranteeing the peace of our country and the survival of our democracy, not because it will favour the NPP, but because it will favour our democracy.”
Police Defence
In a related development, the Ghana Police Service has defended the action of the personnel as being in line with the rule of law. A statement authored by the Director General of the Public Affairs Directorate of the Service, DCOP David Nenyi Ampah-Bennin, explained that upon receipt of a letter from the groups organising the demonstration, a series of meetings were held with them.
The groups, the police said, were not prepared to compromise on their stand – which was to picket the Electoral Commission and Parliament House.
“In our quest to ensure that the groups exercised their constitutional right to demonstrate, we made several alternative proposals for consideration with respect to route and location, while maintaining their own proposed date for the event,” the statement posited.
“The police service would want to put on record that the police applied democratic principles of policing and we will continue to apply these principles in the discharge of our mandate,” the statement concluded.
Dailyguide
