Johnson Asiedu Nketia
The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has run to the Commonwealth Secretariat with deafening cacophony of wolf warnings about perceived acts of human rights violations, criminal persecutions and harassment of its members and supporters by the government.
In a petition signed by its General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, the NDC said institutions such as the judiciary with the “core mandate” to “mediate between the interests of opposing parties and ensure the promotion of the rule of law and individual liberties have become systematically enfeebled with attendant loss of public confidence.”
It, therefore, called on the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth of Nations to advise and encourage the government, headed by President Akufo-Addo, to desist from “these acts that threaten Ghana’s peace and security.”
According to the NDC, criminal trials of the former Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Cocoa Board, Stephen Kwabena Opuni; NDC National Chairman, Samuel Ofosu Ampofo; NDC Deputy Communications Officer, Anthony Kwaku Boahen; and NDC MP for Ajumako-Enyan-Esiam, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson are nothing but political witch-hunting being embarked by the government.
The petition indicated that the NDC, as the largest opposition party in Ghana, has a huge stake in the success of Ghana’s democracy, intimating that the party’s founder, ex-President Jerry John Rawlings, played a “pivotal role” in ushering Ghana into the Fourth Republican democratic rule since 1993.
“For this and other reasons, the NDC has remained steadfast and committed to Ghana’s democracy and the ideals and values of the Commonwealth,” it stated.
It noted that since 1993, the presidency of Ghana has alternated between the NDC (1993-2000 and 2009-2016) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) (2000-2008 and 2016 to date), and added that currently, Ghana has a hung Parliament with both the NPP and NDC, having 137 Members of Parliament apiece.
The petition said President Akufo-Addo, during the 2016 electioneering campaign as a candidate, “preached violence and mayhem” and upon assuming power, had turned those messages into “structural, institutional and systemic forms of violence, in the form of human rights violations, harassment and political persecutions, against members and supporters of the NDC.”
“Significantly, buffer institutions such as the judiciary whose core mandate is to mediate between the interests of opposing parties and ensure the promotion of the rule of law and individual liberties have become systematically enfeebled with attendant loss of public confidence in these institutions,” the NDC stated.
It claimed that “a recent African Barometer survey report for Ghana indicates that over 84% of Ghanaians do not consider the judiciary to be impartial.”
The NDC added that the image of the judiciary has been further dented by the delivery of “unreasoned court judgments, which read more like partisan or polemical pieces than learned judicial reasoning” consistent with “judicial standards in the legal systems of common law countries.”
“In one such court opinion, a judge presiding over a criminal trial involving the prosecution of a member of the NDC simply ruled that the application had been brought in bad faith and dismissed it without more,” the petition asserted.
Opuni Case
On Dr. Kwabena Opuni’s case, the NDC said they feel compelled to draw attention to the conduct of the government, which in their view demonstrates that “the entire prosecution of Dr. Stephen Kwabena Opuni is nothing but political witch-hunting.”
“During the trial it came to the attention of the lawyers for the defendants that the Government had suppressed relevant evidence that exculpated the defendants.”
“These pieces of relevant evidence, included witness statements obtained during investigations conducted by the state which showed that some of the farmers who used the fertiliser on their cocoa farms indicated that their yield had increased; witness statements showing that there had been alternative laboratory tests of samples of the fertiliser in question by the Ghana Standards Authority, whose results differed from the test results being relied upon by the prosecution, among others.”
Ofosu Ampofo
In the Ofosu Ampofo and Kwaku Boahen’s case, the NDC said the conduct of the government in the matter has been dreadful, leaving them in no doubt that the government is bent on a conviction “regardless of the quality of the evidence.”
“When on January 29, 2020, the prosecution called its first witness in the person of one Benjamin Osei Ampofo Adjei; he testified that he had no recollection of the statements contained in the witness statement attributed to him.”
“However, the signature on the witness statement was his. This is how the leading state newspaper captured the proceedings of January 29, 2021,” the NDC stated.
Ato Forson
In the instance of criminal persecution of the NDC MP for Ajumako-Enyan-Esiam, the party said the government levelled criminal charges against him for willfully causing financial loss to the Republic and for intentionally misapplying public property because Dr. Forson had been vociferous in campaign against the passage of the government’s proposed tax on electronic transactions.
“We believe that the charges against Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson are politically motivated and engineered to weaken his opposition to the E-Levy. This is a brazen abuse of power by the Government of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.”
By Ernest Kofi Adu