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The party said that the bill, in its current form, misdirected parliament and the nation by misrepresenting the nation's problems.
A memorandum signed by the party's communication director, Mr. Kakra Essamuah, and presented to Parliament, said: "As stated by Professor Henrietta Mensah-Bonsu during the proceedings of the commission of investigation of the violence in the by-election of Ayawaso West Wuogon, Ghana does not have "vigilantism" crisis Vigilance arises when individuals or groups engage in violence. law enforcement and crime prevention without proper legal authorization.
This is not the situation we are facing in Ghana today. "
The real problem
According to the memorandum, the problem facing the country was the proliferation of militias armed illegally and involved in violent acts themselves criminal such as the violent seizure of land and other natural resources, violent interventions in conflicts between leaders, violent internal and external attacks. opponents of political parties; attacks on national security facilities and personnel; violent attacks on the courts; and violent attacks on journalists who publish information offensive to certain political interests.
The NDC also identified the infiltration by militia members of unsuited and ill-trained militia members into the country's official security, solely on the basis of their partisan affiliations and partisan was the case during the attack and disruption of the device of Ayawaso West Wuogon. Election that resulted in a brutal badault on a Member of Parliament and the shooting and mutilation of innocent bystanders.
The position of the party is that the current bill and the accompanying memorandum do not demonstrate any government effort to understand the problem.
"As has been demonstrated, the bill does not adequately describe our problems and will not provide lasting solutions to the problem of illegal militias. What the public clearly expects of the government and the entire political establishment are concrete and coordinated responses to specific issues.
NDC view
According to the NDC, the legislation in force deals much more comprehensively and clearly with the problems of political violence that the country faced than what the bill contained.
Therefore, the NDC submits that Section 200 of the Criminal Offenses Act responds more effectively to the concerns of armed militia operations than the Bill and renders it worthless.
"We also draw attention to article 255 of the Criminal Offenses Act, which deals with the" prevention of forced election "and reads as follows:" Anyone who tries to to prevent, obstruct or interfere with a public election by force, violence, threat or an act that is a criminal offense punishable under this Act, commits an offense. with this provision is that it defines these offenses as offenses while the bill has elevated them to the second degree, "says the memorandum.
According to the NDC, the problem of the militias was a complex socio-political problem. It was simply a matter of calling it "vigilantism" and rushing towards "anti-vigilant" legislation that did not solve anything.
"This almost guarantees almost new eruptions of political violence in the near future. On the contrary, we need to understand the problem comprehensively and respond to it intelligently and comprehensively, "NDC said.
Two imperative steps
To move forward, the NDC said that at least two steps were imperative to progress and inform any legislative debate.
The first step, he said, was for the government to publish the report of the Election Violence Investigation Commission in Ayawaso West Wuogon and that the mandate of the short commission be somewhat narrow, the NDC believed that the evidence before the commission was an excellent basis for further questioning, as the committee's reflections would almost certainly do.
Secondly, the NDC said the government should help the National Peace Council to organize the national stakeholder dialogue on political violence and peaceful social engagement.
This, he said, "will enable us, as a nation, to collectively question the problem of political violence in greater depth than the narrow mandate and structure of the Short Commission would permit, and would result in a consensus on how to deal with the threat.
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