<\/p>\n
Johnson Asiedu Nketia<\/strong><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n In a petition signed by its General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, the NDC said institutions such as the judiciary with the \u201ccore mandate\u201d to \u201cmediate 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.\u201d<\/p>\n 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 \u201cthese acts that threaten Ghana\u2019s peace and security.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The petition indicated that the NDC, as the largest opposition party in Ghana, has a huge stake in the success of Ghana\u2019s democracy, intimating that the party\u2019s founder, ex-President Jerry John Rawlings, played a \u201cpivotal role\u201d in ushering Ghana into the Fourth Republican democratic rule since 1993.<\/p>\n \u201cFor this and other reasons, the NDC has remained steadfast and committed to Ghana\u2019s democracy and the ideals and values of the Commonwealth,\u201d it stated.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The petition said President Akufo-Addo, during the 2016 electioneering campaign as a candidate, \u201cpreached violence and mayhem\u201d and upon assuming power, had turned those messages into \u201cstructural, institutional and systemic forms of violence, in the form of human rights violations, harassment and political persecutions, against members and supporters of the NDC.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSignificantly, 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,\u201d the NDC stated.<\/p>\n It claimed that \u201ca recent African Barometer survey report for Ghana indicates that over 84% of Ghanaians do not consider the judiciary to be impartial.\u201d<\/p>\n The NDC added that the image of the judiciary has been further dented by the delivery of \u201cunreasoned court judgments, which read more like partisan or polemical pieces than learned judicial reasoning\u201d consistent with \u201cjudicial standards in the legal systems of common law countries.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn 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,\u201d the petition asserted.<\/p>\n Opuni Case<\/strong><\/p>\n On Dr. Kwabena Opuni\u2019s case, the NDC said they feel compelled to draw attention to the conduct of the government, which in their view demonstrates that \u201cthe entire prosecution of Dr. Stephen Kwabena Opuni is nothing but political witch-hunting.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDuring the trial it came to the attention of the lawyers for the defendants that the Government had suppressed relevant evidence that exculpated the defendants.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThese 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Ofosu Ampofo<\/strong><\/p>\n In the Ofosu Ampofo and Kwaku Boahen\u2019s 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 \u201cregardless of the quality of the evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen 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.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHowever, the signature on the witness statement was his. This is how the leading state newspaper captured the proceedings of January 29, 2021,\u201d the NDC stated.<\/p>\n Ato Forson <\/strong><\/p>\n 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\u2019s proposed tax on electronic transactions.<\/p>\n \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n By Ernest Kofi Adu<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1007635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1007634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1007634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1007634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1007634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1007634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}