Opinions of Wednesday, 19 December 2012

Columnist: The Catalyst

Stand Up And Be Counted!

It is not enough to claim love for Ghana but sit aloof when evil people have set themselves on a path to destroy the country. Happenings over the past week should give cause for worry for anyone who has this country at heart.
Like they severally indicated ahead of the election, Nana Akufo-Addo and the rest of the NPP leadership are pushing this country down a very slippery path after losing the election. The lawless acts engaged in by NPP supporters with impunity pose grave danger for this country and all who have mouths must begin speaking now before it is too late.
We cannot live in a country where some think they have a divine right to trample on the rights of the rest. If Akufo-Addo feels he was cheated in the elections, he must go to court. That is what civilised people do. They way to go about situations like this is not to let loose intoxicated and gullible followers on the streets of Accra and elsewhere to go about killing, stabbing and inflicting wounds on innocent Ghanaians with ‘all-die-be-die’ cutlasses and other offensive weapons.
When the late President Mills felt cheated by the NPP in the 2004 elections, which the NDC believed he won by a whopping margin of 1, 500,000 votes but was robbed by Mr Kufuor and the NPP, President Mills did not let loose party thugs with offensive weapons on innocent Ghanaians. He did the most sensible thing by putting Ghana first and congratulating Mr Kufuor on his declared victory, then he waited for God’s own appointed time, which eventually came in the 2008 election and he became president of Ghana even under most difficult circumstances.
We wonder what groups such as Ghana Bar Association (GBA), Centre for Democratic Development (CDD) Ghana Medical Association (GMA) and some individual persons would be saying if it was NDC supporters who were perpetrating these barbaric acts on innocent Ghanaians as NPP supporters have engaged in since last Monday.
The Peace Council has done a yeoman’s job so far. But we urge other voices of reason to join in the effort to call Akufo-Addo and his NPP hooligans to order.
We hope that the moral society will stand up and be counted in this trying moment of our country. But if they sit aloof or play the ostrich because it is NPP, we only hope and pray that the security agencies will be able to fight this evil to the end so that NDC supporters will not find the need to start defending themselves- the moment we believe the civil society and religious groups are anxiously waiting for in order to find their lost voice.