NDC condemns politics of ethnicity by NPP

THE National Democratic Congress has condemned what it describes as politics of ethnicity by the opposition New Patriotic Party.

According to the NDC, recent comments by leading members of the NPP, rallying the youth of that party to resort to the use of pestles, stones and guns, coupled with the latest rampage resulting from fall outs of Mr Kennedy Agyepong’s arrest clearly points to the implementation of an orchestrated and well rehearsed agenda, meant to throw the nation into chaos.

The NDC’s General Secretary, Mr Johnson Asiedu-Nketiah, at a press conference in Accra, yesterday, on the recent political upheavals in the country, indicated that the NPP chairman, Mr Jake Obetsebi Lamptey, justified violent clashes in Cote d’Ivoire by drawing similarities between what he described as the suppressions of Akans, therefore urging them to revolt against government.

He said that  the NDC was of the opinion that the NPP was looking for triggers during the biometric voters registration exercise to unleash terror they had planned on innocent people. 

The NDC General Secretary said where those triggers don’t exists, the NPP would seek to manufacture same with the active connivance of media houses that shared in their agenda.

According to Mr Nketiah, the NDC was dismayed by attempts by some religious leaders and civil society groups to subtly justify Kennedy Agyepong’s declaration of war and the call for ethnic genocide by linking it with the incident at Odododiodio.

Equally appalling, he said, was the response of the NPP in the Kennedy Agyepong issue.

“On the one hand, here was the NPP leadership caving under the pressure of public opinion and issuing a statement dissociating themselves from the Mr Agyepong’s statement, and yet organising a hero’s welcome for him when he was granted bail,” Mr Asiedu Nketiah pointed out.

Furthermore, he described as absurd when NPP members who claimed they believed in the rule of law came out to applaud a District Commander of Police in the Ashanti Region who issued a shoot and kill order directed towards NDC accredited monitoring agents in that region.

He said the unfortunate incidents in Odododiodio and Kumasi notwithstanding, this year’s registration process had so far seen much improvement in terms of security breaches over the 2008 exercise, saying, “those who care for the truth could check the facts for themselves.”

SOURCE: Della Russel Ocloo, Daily Graphic, April 26, 2012