---CJA demonstrate on December 11

The Committee for Joint Action (CJA), organisers of the series of “Wahala” demonstrations and the only Civil Society Organisation to resort to street demonstrations as a form of democratic protest in the Third and Fourth Governments of the Fourth Republic under President John Agyekum Kufuor, last Tuesday announced plans to stage the “mother of all demonstrations”, the biggest demonstration yet, on Tuesday 11th December, 2007.

Dubbed the “Ye wuooo”, “Agbe woeee” or “We are being killed’ demonstration, the organisers hope to draw the attention of the world to the hardships and insecurity of the times even as NPP Presidential candidate aspirants splash money around like confetti.

The CJA’s 12-point reasons for the demonstration are as follows:

· The NPP Government has once again demonstrated its contempt and disdain for the people of Ghana.

· The NPP Government on 1st November increased petroleum, electricity and water prices at one fell stroke.

· The petroleum price increase is the fifth increase in 2007 alone.

· Since coming into power, the NPP Government has increased petroleum prices by 700% from ¢6,400 per gallon to ¢44,000 per gallon.

· The 1st November increases in water and electricity tariffs represent an average increase of 35%.

· The one year power curtailment crisis was the result of a massive policy failure.

· As a result of the power crisis, domestic lives were disrupted, electrical appliances were destroyed, industrial production was disrupted, jobs were lost, poverty increased, millions of learning hours were lost and avoidable deaths in unlit hospital operating rooms were endured.

· Because Ghanaians endured the hardships and inconveniences with fortitude, the NPP Government has been emboldened to “pass on” to the public the outrageously high cost of unsuitable ad hoc measures and profiteering they inflicted on the people in response to the crisis.

· The country’s insufficient, poor quality, high cost water has resulted in the outbreaks of cholera, dysentery and guinea warm.

· The Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee sittings have demonstrated the level of corruption and waste that the NPP has presided over in the last seven years.

· The ostentatious corruption of several NPP Presidential aspirants and the NPP acceptance of that ostentation is clear evidence of this corruption.

· The deadly costs of the NPP’s destructiveness is made evident in Northern Ghana; in the lives, homes and livelihoods that have been needlessly lost by the totally misplaced priorities of the NPP leadership and their brigandage; in the disintegration in the Anlo crisis and in the disruption and lost lives arising from the clumsy and partisan intervention by the security forces; in the dangerous politics of divide and rule and pandering to backward elitism that gave us the still unresolved Dagbon crisis; and in the confusion resulting from the recent re-demarcation of district boundaries.

In the view of the CJA, the dehumanisation and exploitation of Ghanaians by the NPP Government have gotten to a point that Ghanaians have not only given up hope; they have given up on life itself. In the words of the Press Statement released at the Press Conference:

“We, the public have been so abused that we have become desensitised to our own suffering. We no longer react to reports that parents cannot afford to put their children through any level of the educational system. We are no longer moved by the many stories of young mothers imprisoned at hospitals after delivery because they cannot pay the hospital fees! The media does not even bother to report the daily eviction of workers’ families from rented homes for non-payment of rent (with salaries that do not last for even one week!). The media ignores the rampant conversion of toilets in compound houses into rooms to allow property owners to squeeze even more out of their over-stressed tenants. We accept without outrage the fact that our youth are reduced to selling toothpicks and chewing gum or themselves in the middle of the road to survive. We are resigned to mothers selling their own children for a paltry 20 Ghana Cedis. We accept that many fear to walk on our streets for fear of being mugged or raped. We will tolerate almost anything as along as we can get on with some semblance of normalcy”.

But the CJA defiantly refuses to give up and seek to rouse the dormant masses of Ghanaians to action with the following ringing series of rhetorical questions:

“How shall we respond to 1st November and the renewed assault on our living standards? How long will our generation continue to endure this abuse at the hands of vampire public servants? With fuel now at ¢44,000 per gallon will we now all walk to our work places and schools? Will we continue to grumble privately as the high and mighty speed past us in their motorcades purchased with our blood, sweat and tears? With water tariffs up 35% will we now all drink and cook with rain, river, lagoon or gutter water? Will we stop bathing or washing our clothes? And will we continue to tolerate (or even to admire!) our rulers and their friends as they pour treated water on the lawns that we provide them with? With electricity bills up 35% and more businesses collapsing what will become of our working people? Will we now sleep in the dark? Will we all go back to using candles and lanterns? And will we sigh in impotence when we see the ruling elite in their wall-to-wall air-conditioning – which we pay for?

How long will we as parents continue by our reluctance to question authority to blight our children’s futures and to tolerate reckless and ill planned programmes like the national educational reforms? How long will we continue to ignore our own deepening wretched mess and tolerate the river of deceit of the Kufuor administration that claims things are improving? How long will we continue to pretend that we are making sacrifices for a better future? How long will we continue to identify with our exploiters rather than looking at our own circumstances and act in our own best interests? We all know deep in our hearts that we are simply victims of exploitation. When will we act as free men and women to assert our rights to a better life now and here on earth?”

The CJA provides the answers to its own questions.

It states: “We must regain control of our lives. Our 50th anniversary must become the occasion of our liberation from exploitation in all its forms. We must put a stop to these brazen acts of the NPP government by demonstrating our revulsion at an unaccountable and irresponsible government. We must send a clear and loud message to all politicians and public officials that Ghanaians can no longer be taken for a ride. Conscious of the peoples’ yearning for change, the CJA has decided to provide an appropriate vehicle for mass mobilization against hardship, abuse of office and open thievery of national resources. We announce that we would hold a massive demonstration on Tuesday 11th December, 2007 to protest against the hardship, corruption, drug dealing, unemployment and official impunity which have engulfed the nation”.

The Tuesday 11th December 2007 demonstration is slated to start at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle at 9.00 am and end at the Hearts of Oak Park in Accra.