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News
Release
AFAG
September
25, 2012
GHANA POLICE HOUNDS AFAG!
Good morning ladies and gentlemen of the press and thank
you for honoring our invitation at such short notice. We
are indeed grateful.
We have invited you here today to pour out our hearts on
some unfortunate developments within and without the
Ghana Police Service and AFAG respectively.
As you all gathered here would bear us out, AFAG has for
some time now focused its advocacy on the Electoral
Commission of Ghana. The first as you may all recall was
a press conference dated August 28, 2012 and captioned
“Afari Djan; Rescind Your Decision or Ghanaians Will
Speak”. Couple of days ago, AFAG again organized yet
another press conference with the caption “Red
Revolution Demonstration”. It is worthy of note that in
all of these press conferences, AFAG expressed its
utmost disgust about the decision of the Dr. Afari Djan
led Electoral Commission to create 45 new constituencies
and subsequently promised some series of actions to be
undertaken by the group.
Cardinal
among these was presentation of petitions to some
credible and respectable institutions in the country as
well as some selected Embassies and High Commissions in
Ghana. The latter was informed by the fact that as a
member of the community of nations; Ghana could not be
treated as an Island since the entire world stood to
suffer in the event of any electoral mishap. True to our
word, we have successfully done so and anyone interested
could ascertain the veracity of our claims or otherwise.
Again, we also sought to register our displeasure with
the Electoral Commission by embarking upon what we
dubbed as the “Red Revolution demonstration” which was
slated for Tuesday, 25th to Thursday, 27th of September,
2012.
Ladies and gentlemen, as has been the standard practice,
the Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG), in
accordance with the public order act 491 (1994), on
Wednesday, 12th September 2012, duly wrote to the Ghana
Police Service to notify them on our intent to embark on
the demonstration. This notification included the routes
to be used by demonstrators on the day.
It should be made clear to all that the request of AFAG
was duly granted by the Ghana Police Service. Thus AFAG
was cleared to undertake the “Red Revolution
Demonstration on the 25 to 27 September, 2012 using
routes agreed upon by the leadership of AFAG and the
Police Service. We wish to place on record, that as a
group the approval of our carefully selected routes gave
us a major boost, since the general public whose support
we seek to court would have felt the impact of the Red
Revolution. This was however never meant to be.
Ladies and gentlemen, it would interest you to note,
that some days later, the Police Service which had
agreed to and approved our routes invited the leadership
of AFAG to a meeting only to renege on the agreement
reached earlier. To demonstrate their seriousness and
unpreparedness to guard and protect demonstrators, the
police promised to secure an interim injunction to halt
the demonstration if we insisted on using the same
routes the police had approved only few days back. This
is indeed mind boggling. We do not at this stage want to
postulate that there are some orders from above
dictating the turn of events as far as our demonstration
is concerned.
Ladies and gentlemen in view of this development,
coupled with our commitment to the tenets of peaceful
protests, AFAG in the interest of public good, is forced
to announce the postponement for the second time an
intended demonstration due to orchestration by the
powers that be and ably supported by institutions of
state to make room for further engagements.
We are however assuring all that AFAG is still resolute
and would never be perturbed by the orchestrations,
frustrations and threats of our detractors.
Today the powers that be have had their way but someday,
the majority of Ghanaians will also have their say.
Thank you.
Signed
Henry Asante 0248274646
Arnold Boateng 0244294754
Bright Acheampong 0545230621
Kwaku Ohene Djan 0243372125
Williams Agyei 0262208956
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