Minority Nails Mills

Posted: Daily Guide |Tuesday, 27 April 2010

By Charles Takyi-Boadu & Shiella Sackey
The Minority group in Parliament has accused President John Evans Atta Mills and his ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration of multiple complicity in the recent developments in the Yendi municipality.

They believe the pronouncements, actions and inactions of the President and some members of the NDC have led to the simmering tension in the area.

At a press conference in Accra yesterday, Deputy Minority Leader and New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament for Lawra-Nandom, Ambrose Dery, said President Mills has demonstrated his bias in the ensuing Yendi crisis which he described as ‘a politically and socially sensitive matter’, by deliberately choosing to call on the Andani Gate and shunning the Abudu Gate during his recent visit to the Northern region.

He wondered why the NDC government has without any justification whatsoever ‘willfully’ failed to implement the findings and recommendations of the Wuaku Commission, which was paid with the taxpayer’s money to conduct extensive investigations into events that led to the murder of the late Ya-Na Yakubu Andani and 40 others.

Though the Commission’s report named 42 persons from both sides of the two Gates for their involvement in the March 2002 events which led to the death of the Ya-Na and some of his subjects, Mr. Dery could not fathom why only members of the Abudu Gate and especially those known to be NPP members, were arrested and are being prosecuted.

Meanwhile, the Commission’s report has neither been reversed, reviewed nor set aside by any competent authority.

This is what seems to be making the Minority MPs jittery about the NDC and the Mills administration’s decision to not only renege on its promise, but also show a sense of bias in the entire process.

Aside that, the Deputy Minority Leader noted with emphasis that the NDC government has equally failed to keep faith with its pre-election promise, as contained in its manifesto in which the party promised to set up a “non-partisan, professionally competent and independent Presidential Commission to re-open investigations into the murder of the Ya-Na and the others who perished together with him”.

“Instead, the NDC government has ostensibly elected the path of politically discriminatory arrests and prosecution of the Yendi Abudu Gate,” Derry said, insisting that “the NDC government has once again deceived the people of Ghana”.

The Minority strongly believes that the effect of this action can only deepen the crisis in the area and not resolve it.

The Deputy Minority Leader thus believes that “the action of the NDC government is a clear illustration of its haste to satisfy the outbursts, whims and caprices of former President Jerry Rawlings and a demonstration of its desperation to purportedly consolidate its electoral support in Dagbon irrespective of the social, political and security implications and consequences”.

The Minority group in Parliament says this “therefore demonstrates beyond every shred of doubt that the NDC government is not interested in peace and stability in the Dagbon area as well as the survival and growth of our democracy”.

Rather, it believes the NDC as a party and a government is only interested in its survival and clinging to power, in spite of the economic consequences, describing it as a selfish political agenda.

Whilst appreciating the fact that the recent clash in Gushiegu involved members of both sides of the political divide, NPP and NDC, Mr. Derry said it is however “incredible and unfairly discriminatory for the NDC government to arrest only NPP supporters”, emphasizing that there are clear indications that the NDC government is only determined to promote discriminatory practice in the country’s criminal justice system by its conduct and also to institutionalize the culture of impunity.