Chairman of the National Peace Council, Most Rev. Emmanuel Asante
We have learnt that today the Great Hall of the University of Ghana, Legon, will host the 2nd High Level Meeting Of National Leaders. It is under the auspices of unsurprisingly the National Peace Council and the National House of Chiefs.
The theme of the discourse or engagement is “Strengthening Ghana’s Democratic Stability, Peace And Unity.” We do have reservations about what the high-profile engagement would achieve under the prevailing circumstances of hypocrisy and insincerity of not only the presidency, but also the institutions created to manage such subjects as law enforcement and the maintenance of peace – the National Peace Council not being an exception.
We wish we were dishing out plaudits to the Council under the chairmanship of Most Rev. Prof Emmanuel Asante and others who are quick to turn up for such high-notched occasions which are full of rhetoric and display of traditional attire, even as the Naaba Abdulais continue to spill blood and boast about the criminality on the airwaves.
We are unable to doff our hats for the Peace Council because the Council, like the Ghana Police Service, has not lived up to expectation, their performance adding little or nothing to the maintenance of peace – empirical evidence not in shortage to buttress our conclusion.
We have heard that one of the highlights of today’s engagement is the signing of an undertaking by the leaders of the political parties to keep the peace. Nothing can be so hypocritical. In 2012, a similar signing of a deal was choreographed in Kumasi under the usual television cameras, the dividend thereof non-existent.
As we compose this commentary, some Ghanaians – not NDC supporters – are nursing their wounds in hospitals after cutlass attacks by hoodlums who would not be arrested because they belong to a protected political grouping.
We can state that the Kumasi choreograph of 2012 achieved nothing as would today’s: it only paved the way for the ruling party to be emboldened to encourage their members to be more blood-thirsty since after all, the buck stops with them.
Under the circumstances, we cannot afford not to be brusque because the nation is at crossroads. We cannot engage in such naked theatricals when these have no effect on the mindset of politicians whose ethnocentric remarks in their campaigns threaten the peace of the nation.
Naaba Abdulai continues to threaten everybody but himself and the NDC, with death because, as he put it, he and his gang have killed many and would not depart from that gory path, in a country which is supposed to be ruled by law and not by the NDC.
The fact is that such choreographed and formal engagements do not mean anything when politicians at the helm turn their attention from the violent conduct of their supporters; who may be acting on their behalf anyway.
The president continues to spew ethnocentric rhetoric each time he is in the Northern Regions and the Peace Council does not find anything unusual with such conduct?
Such un-presidential conduct is an impetus for the continuous polarization of a country which is witnessing its worst nightmares in recent times.
We are unable to, as are other compatriots, endorse today’s meeting, especially the signing of an undertaking to keep a peace that is incessantly threatened by the government which does not find it worthwhile to maintain it.