Militia meeting: NDC threatened to go out three times – Sammy Awuku

General News on Friday, April 12, 2019

Source: adomonline.com

2019-04-12

The National Organizer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr. Sammy Awuku, revealed that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) had threatened to withdraw from the meeting three times to exercise political vigilance.

The two main political parties, the NDC and the NPP, stressed the need to put an end to the activities of the political self-defense groups in the country and therefore met on 9 April 2019 to agree on measures to be taken to end activism in Ghana.

Mr. Awuku, reporting on the meeting, said that the CND's badertion that the NPP's stance did not show that the party wanted to talk about the issue was false.

According to the political leader, it took the intervention of the meeting panel to prevent the CND from going out of the meeting on countless occasions.

"When we came back from the break, the secretary general of the NDC took his file and told the president that they could not continue the meeting because the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) had called its national president. One of the panel members intervened and asked them to tell the CID that they would be there after the meeting.

"John Boadu then asked them when the CID asked them to come and see him and we told him the day before the meeting. My point is that they had an excuse to tell the CID the day before the meeting, but they could not find any excuses the day we were supposed to meet as political parties to talk about vigilance, so with their posture and our posture acted as if we did not want to talk about the issue? He asked.

President Nana Akufo-Addo, in her speech on the state of the nation of 2019, called on the leaders of the two main political parties to meet and find a lasting solution to political vigilance.

This followed the chaos that characterized the by-election of the constituency of Ayawaso West Wuogon where the government was accused of engaging in state-sponsored political violence.

President Akufo-Addo also said that he would consider legislating to end political vigilance if the dialogue resulted in no positive outcome.