NDC wants Peace Council to choose venue for partisan militia dialogue

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The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has asked the National Peace Council to choose a venue for the long-awaited dialogue between them and the new ruling Patriotic Party (NPP).

They also want the Council to mediate the dialogue requested by President Akufo-Addo so that the two main parties can find a solution to the threat posed by partisan militias in the country.

This is a response to a letter from NPP Secretary General John Boadu asking the opposition party to choose the venue of their choice for the meeting.

While accepting the CND's request to expand the scope of the dialogue to include multiple stakeholders, Mr. Boadu, in this letter, badured that theNPP takes advantage of this consideration during the meeting to give both parties the opportunity to agree on the different stakeholders to be invited to future missions."

He added, "The NPP is proposing that this crucial meeting take place this week in a place that is right for you. We invite you to contact the party as soon as possible when you find the appropriate venue for this meeting."

John Boadu

In its response, the NDC said: "We are pleased that you, like our opinion, have confirmed our position that this discussion must be a multi-stakeholder engagement.

"In the same spirit, we have taken the liberty of asking the National Peace Council to exercise its statutory mandate and to badume the role of mediator in the deliberations on the above-mentioned subject.

"We are ready to meet you at any place and date proposed by the National Peace Council," said party secretary-general Johnson Asiedu Nketia.

In an interview with Joy News, director of NDC communications, Samuel Gyamfi said the party had decided to ask the Peace Council to choose a place and a date because they did not think the NPP would go to the NDC. 39 place of their choice.

He does not accept the idea that the letter of the NDC – a third – only prolongs the process, especially as the 30-day deadline has elapsed since the President suggested that they meet and that no meeting has yet taken place.

"The question is who pays for this site, for example," Gyamfi said, adding, "Do not you think the NPP could have come back to ask us about the suitability of the site?

Sammy Gyamfi

"There is no guarantee that if we had decided ourselves on a place and time, the NPP would have had no counter-suggestion."

Describing the need for dialogue as a necessity, he said that it was time for both parties to demonstrate more than words and letters.

He pointed out that if the problem was left to the NDC and the NPP, there should be no surprise if it was to be the usual cheap political goal score that tends to happen when both parties discuss a problem.

He stated that the NDC would not have been able to agree on a time and place as they can not be judges in their own court.

"It is important that such an important national exercise be carried out by a respectable body," he said.

Mr Gyamfi believes that if the NPP has no problem with the National Peace Council as mediator in the dialogue, it certainly should not have a problem with the Council's choice of venue.

"The process should not be reduced to the usual NDC – NPP process," he said.