Posted: daily Guide |www.dailyguideghana.com
Wednesday, 08 September 2010
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
The Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG) has added its voice to calls for the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Paul Tawiah Quaye, to do the honourable thing by resigning his position to save the “sinking” image of the Service.
AFAG says it is convinced that the IGP’s continuous stay in office would bring civil actions and lawlessness when Ghana goes to the polls to elect a president in 2012, thereby undermining the country’s long cherished peace and political stability.
This, they said, was evident in recent events including the brutalities visited on innocent residents of Abomosu in the just-ended Atiwa bye-election, in the full glare of the police, which have led to a mistrust of the Service.
Speaking at a press conference in Accra, spokesman for the group, Samuel Adjei-Mensah Korsah said “our worries are reinforced by the inability of state institutions as the Ghana Police Service and the security agencies to defend our constitution and protect the liberties and human rights of all Ghanaians.”
AFAG noted that it is becoming clear that the police are failing to operate in a balanced manner in the moderation of political activities in the country.
They could not fathom why the police arrested and invited Nana Adarkwa of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) and Joy FM’s Ato Kwamena Dadzie for purportedly ‘causing fear panic’ and yet allowed the chairman of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), Dr Kwabena Adjei to go scot free when he indicated their (NDC) intentions to ‘clean’ the country’s judiciary and even proceeded to dare any individual or group of persons to raise and issue with it and vowed to take them on.
“The police’s conduct is starting to breed deep mistrust and insecurity amongst large sections of our people, such that many of them are beginning to think of taking up citizens’ actions to protect themselves, their freedoms and their political interests,” AFAG stressed.
The pressure group believes the NDC chairman’s vitriolic attack on the Judiciary, which set off “an organised chorus of threats and ugly noises by NDC functionaries and assorted bedfellows to purge and clean up Ghana’s Judiciary in general, and remove the Chief Justice in particular”, poses the gravest challenge to the sacred principles of the separation of powers under the country’s constitution.
For them, these unguarded utterances, which they said included direct and unsubtle threats to let loose the ruling party’s ‘foot-soldiers’ on members of the Judiciary, if Government failed to interfere, have created a state of panic, insecurity and fear of intimidation amongst many members of the Judiciary.
However, AFAG said it was not the least surprised at these unhealthy developments, considering the historical antecedents of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) government which metamorphosed into the modern-day NDC, with specific reference to the cold events that led to the abduction and subsequent murder of three High Court Judges in 1982.
For this reason, the group said, “It is not surprising therefore that a senior Judge of the High Court publicly expressed fear for his safety when he recused himself from the Ya Na murder case and went on to challenge the Attorney-General’s office to substantiate its attempt to bully and blackmail him.”
Ordinarily, the leadership of AFAG said, it would have been comforted by the president’s reassurance that the Executive will not interfere in the Judiciary, but cannot help but point out that “his Excellency’s statement was negated and totally undermined immediately by that of the regional chairmen of the NDC, which threatened to unleash the wrath of their unrepentant foot-soldiers to chase out those judges that the party believed were unfit for their jobs.”
The group stated that it was worried that this ‘organised network of advocates’ has shown great disregard for the President’s position because it poses a real and present danger to the country’s Judiciary in particular and all law-abiding citizens in general, stressing that “the President’s position only absolves the Executive and not the party, of which he is the leader.”
AFAG said “the NDC party and its men have an agenda to prosecute and the President as the leader of their party has not succeeded in sufficiently re-assuring Ghanaians of a non NDC party aggression and future attacks in any form on the Judiciary.”
It called on all Ghanaians, both home and abroad, to join in a massive civil action in the coming weeks, to demonstrate the full and unflinching support of the good people of Ghana for judicial independence, the rule of law, civil liberty and continuing peace in the country.