The main opposition National Democratic Congress says it refused to sign the Peace council’s document on vigilantism because other key stakeholders have not yet signed.
According to the party, signing the document will be premature since most of the agencies assigned greater responsibilities have not been made to sign.
“We looked at the roadmap and we realised that document assigns responsibilities to various agencies and the fact those agencies were not part of the signing to the treaty, we thought it was not good enough. Such a national document should not be signed by only two political parties. We think signing the document now will be premature but in principle, we agree with the content.
“Out of the 22 recommendations only 4 mentions the political parties so we think they should take lead in signing the document,” a member of the party Abraham Amaliba told Starr News.
An attempt by the Peace Council Chair to convince the party’s representative at the ceremony Alex Segbefia failed to yield results.
The view of the National Democratic Congress is that the signing ceremony is premature. We do not think we have exhausted all the possible issues that are required to have a meaningful document that we can all work to. The reason we say so is that, when you look at the roadmap, it has 22 recommendations. Four of those recommendations relate to political parties. Eighteen of the recommendations belong to others, namely, the government, NCCE, civil society organizations, the Electoral Commission etc. None of these are signatories to the document you are going to sign,” the former health minister said after refusing to sign the document.
Meanwhile, the opposition NPP represented by its general secretary John Boadu signed the document.
“We believe that if all actors will make sure that our members are restricted to our core duty of ensuring that we propagate what we believe in, and through lawful means win power from the mandate of the people and also have the opportunity to implement what we believe in, I think that we will be able to reach a level where we will reduce the menace to its barest minimum,” Mr. Boadu said.
The document became necessary following the scary scenes of masked men from the national security at the Ayawaso West Wuogon during a by-election last year.
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM
