The National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Tuesday, 4 February 2020 said the parties have not exhausted all the possible issues that are required to have a meaningful document on the plans to end political vigilantism in Ghana, hence their decision not to sign the road map.
The Code of Conduct and Roadmap to ending political vigilantism was developed by a technical committee following a series of dialogues organised by the National Peace Council.
The largest opposition party in Ghana refused to sign the roadmap to ending vigilantism in the country.
Mr Alex Segbefia, a leading member of the party who was at the meeting where the documents were supposed to be signed, said: “The view of the National Democratic Congress is that the signing ceremony is premature. We do not think we have exhausted all the possible issues that are required to have a meaningful document that we can all work to. The reason we say so is that, when you look at the roadmap, it has 22 recommendations. Four of those recommendations relate to political parties. Eighteen of the recommendations belong to others, namely, the government, NCCE, civil society organizations, the Electoral Commission etc. None of these are signatories to the document you are going to sign”, he added.
Mr. Segbefia also intimated that going ahead to sign without the inputs of the other recommended stakeholders will cripple the effectiveness of the roadmap which will then yield no results in the fight against political party vigilantism.
“So, in effect, if you look at the communiqué we’ve already signed with the Peace Council, they actually already cover the four items that are directly related to the political parties. We cannot be seen to signing a document for which other parties who are playing a part do not sign because then we cannot effectively monitor it… we think that the content is good but we do not have a way of making sure that it becomes effective.”
Source: classfmonline
