Johnson Asiedu Nketia, the National Chairman of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), has said signing peace pacts ahead of elections have not provided any real outcomes over the years.
Expressing skepticism about the effectiveness of such declarations, the NDC Chair has said his outfit is not going to sign any agreements heading into the December elections.
This, he said, is due to the ineffectiveness of past experiences. “Signing a peace declaration doesn’t mean anything to the party, as previous pacts have not yielded any real results,” he said on Accra-based JoyNews Wednesday, August 14, 2024.
According to him, the real deal in violence prevention is proactivity and not symbolic gestures. He said whether a declaration is signed or not, if violence is allowed to brew, it is bound to happen.
“If you allow violence to brew, it will happen whether you sign a declaration or not. That’s why, more than a year ago, I started talking about the need to remove the building blocks for a violent election,” he explained.
Mr. Asiedu Nketia is urging stakeholders to address the root causes of the violence that sometimes mar the political processes rather than waiting for them to spiral out of control before focusing on peace pacts.
“At any stage when something is happening, I call on those who, in the future, will call us to sign a declaration to speak up and stop it from happening.
“Otherwise, if you let these issues build up and then say, ‘Let’s play a peace football match, sign a declaration, and hope for a peaceful election,’ it won’t work. We did all this and more in 2020,” he said.
Citing the 2020 elections for instance, the NDC National Chair stated that despite the actions taken by the National Peace Council and Council of State, the process was still marred by violence.
“Signing or not signing is not the issue. What we need to address are the building blocks that lead to violence,” he insisted.
The alleged illegal recruitment of about 10,000 people into the security services according to General Mosquito, as he is known in the political space, said is also a brewing source of unrest. “It’s brewing now,” he added.
In the 2020 election, the NDC protested the results, describing them as “flawed” and alleging that state security forces were used to intimidate voters in their strongholds.
The National Election Security Taskforce (NESTF) reported that five lives were lost during the 2020 general elections, with 61 recorded cases of electoral and post-electoral violence across the country, including six incidents involving gunshots.
