General News of Wednesday, 5 May 2021

Source: www.ghanaweb.com

COVID should not be used as a pretext to suppress citizens right to protest – Sammy Gyamfi

The #FixTheCountry demonstration was scheduled for Saturday, May 9, 2021 The #FixTheCountry demonstration was scheduled for Saturday, May 9, 2021

The National Communications Officer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Sammy Gyamfi, has added his voice to the ongoing displeasure expressed by a cross section of Ghanaians over the increasingly unbearing living conditions in the country.

Social media has, in the past few days, gone frenzy, with the hashtag, #FixtheCountry, which has subsequently become a movement against the seeming successive mismanagement of Ghana.

The movement which has been youth-led on social media platform, Twitter, has now morphed into a scheduled demonstration yet to take place on May 9, 2021.

A group of some 20 individuals who wrote to the police have received a negative feedback by the police about their intention to stage a protest.

Head of Public Affairs Unit of the Accra Regional Command of the Ghana Police Service, DSP Effia Tenge, says the planned demonstration will cumulate into a mass gathering which contravenes the imposition of restrictions instituted to manage the spread of COVID-19.

But Sammy Gyamfi in a reaction to the police directive said that the pandemic should not be used as a pretext to suppress the rights of citizens to protest peacefully.

“COVID should not be used as a pretext to suppress our inalienable right to peaceful assembly. It’s about time we had a national conversation about the constitutionality of the Imposition of Restrictions Act, 2020 (Act 1012) and the selective application of same,” Sammy Gyamfi wrote in a tweet.

See Sammy Gyamfi's tweet below: