A former Deputy Attorney General, Dr. Dominic Ayine suggests it would be an overkill for the police to press treasonable charges against Deputy General Secretary of NDC, Koku Anyidoho with reference to his recent “coup” comments.
He however believes Koku Anyidoho crossed the line when he suggested that Ghana’s president, Nana Akufo-Addo could suffer the same fate as his father who was ousted in 1972.
“Somebody should tell Nana Akufo-Addo, massa, history has a very interesting way of repeating itself, on the 13th of January 1972, a certain Colonel Ignatius Kutu Acheampong led an insurrection that removed the progress party from power, Busia was the prime minister, Akufo-Addo’s father was the ceremonial president. Somebody should tell Nana Akufo-Addo that history has an interesting way of repeating itself, ” he told an Accra-based Happy FM on Monday.
He was arrested by the Criminal Investigation Department of the Ghana Police on Tuesday and granted bail two days later after being charged with causing alarm and fear and treason felony.
But Dr. Dominic Ayine, who is the Deputy Ranking Member on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee of Parliament, told TV3’s New Day on Saturday that what Mr. Anyidoho said was a mere “call to civil disobedience”, insisting the NDC firebrand has no capacity to overthrow any government, something his party would not even support.
“The National Democratic Congress, its middle name is democratic meaning we subscribe to the principles of constitutional democracy. There is no way that the NDC will associate itself with a call for a military takeover of government.”
The NDC Deputy General Secretary was rather warning government that if the military cooperation agreement with the United States of America is not well managed, it could lead to a military takeover, he intepreted.
“Koku might have crossed the line a little bit by reference to the 1972 coup, some people may interpret it to mean a signal to the military to intervene. Others simply say it is a warning to the government.
“In the case of the statement by Asiedu Nketiah dissociating the NDC from the comments I believe that his interpretation or the party’s interpretation was that this might be interpreted generally as a call to the military to takeover and we do not want that,” he observed.
“We don’t want this constitutional democracy to be truncated by another military takeover. The constitution itself provides that where such a takeover occurs civilians and every citizen of Ghana has a duty to restore the constitutional order. So we don’t want that to happen and that is why the general secretary quickly came to dissociate the party from the comment.”
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