The National Peace Council (NPC) under its chairman, Most Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Asante, is missing golden opportunities to regain its lost dignity, if it ever had one anyway.
It is one statutory body which should not be attracting the kind of flak it is receiving in recent times for sound reasons of course. Little wonder many have called for its scrapping for want of acceptable performance and relevance. We cannot detach ourselves from such calls, seeing how useless and helpless the NPC has been in the face of motley peace-threatening actions by National Democratic Congress (NDC)-sponsored thugs. The Council’s proclivity towards the ruling party and government is a tag it must work hard to offload.
In other jurisdictions, the Chairman and his entire lieutenants would resign, seeing that the Council has lost the confidence and deference of the people.
The hands of the NDC in the litany of recent violent and peace-breaching actions are too glaring to require probes. In one of the instances, the party has had to shamelessly come out to apologise.
When a collared man of God heads such a peace-seeking council, it is appropriate to say Hallelujah out of gratitude to Yaweh. The reason: such personalities, laden with divinity, are supposed to be immune to the glitters of the modern world, repelling them viciously when they advance towards them. We have gotten it all wrong as our man of God is losing the moral virility to call a spade a spade, no matter whose ox is gored.
It has become very clear that depending on the Chairman of the Council to deal with the pockets of violence even before we go to the polls is akin to seeking needle in a hay stack. He would simply continue to be selectively amnesiac.
Otherwise how can the Council be silent when Kukuom in the Brong-Ahafo Region has showed signs of restiveness and now Suhum, the latter exhibiting insulting bravado and impunity by the ruling party? For how long can we tolerate nonsense?
We cannot accept the eye-service approach to peace. Organising the media, especially television stations, to turn up at the Manhyia Palace to cover a line-up of flag bearers signing up to upholding the peace before, during and after elections is to say the least a charade, unproductive and hypocritical.
Reacting only when non-ruling party actors respond to attacks from their opponents is a disturbing feature of the Council.
Let the Council condemn especially the nonsense which took place in Suhum when NDC thugs seized Electoral Commission (EC) equipment and took same to the residence of the Municipal Chief Executive or forever shut up.
Totally unacceptable, inappropriate and nonsensical especially as we are told reliably that the Divisional or District Police Commander went to beg the unruly chaps holed in the residence of the Municipal Chief Executive, to release the equipment to them. Oh my God, in this country today? What a retrogression!