National Democratic Congress refuses to sign final roadmap to ending political vigilantism in the country

The NDC argued that there was a need for further stakeholder consultations since the working document is incomplete.

This decision was taken by the NDC at a ceremony to endorse the final document today, Tuesday.

A member of the NDC delegation at the dialogue, Alex Segbefia explained that the document will only be meaningful only through a broad consultative agreement.

“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 said.

The Code of Conduct and Roadmap to ending political vigilantism was created by a technical committee after several dialogues organized by the National Peace Council.

This became necessary after the incidents at La-Bawaleshie during the Ayawaso West Wuogon Constituency by-elections in 2019.

Mr Segbefia said signing without the inputs of the other recommended stakeholders will not make the document as effective as expected which in the long-run yield no results in the fight against political party vigilantism.

“So in effect, if you look at the communique’ we have 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.”

The National Peace Council, however, gave the NDC another opportunity to reconsider its position on the matter.

However, the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) signed the roadmap.

General Secretary of the NPP, John Boadu was disappointed at the conduct of the NDC.

“The road map was not sprung on us we were given the opportunity to give our comments months ago. I am disappointed at our colleagues at the other side for not passing their comments to the peace council. The fact that they are aware that they have the capacity to conclude on this matter.”