The Coalition of Civil Societies against Political Vigilantism has kicked against the entire white paper issued by government on the Ayawaso West Wougon by-elections report while issuing a one week ultimatum for the government to withdraw same.
The Group contends government is only engaging in needless politics in a matter that is so critical like electoral violence.
“It is quite worrying that you’ll create a Commission of Inquiry to do such work on your behalf, but you turnaround to reject the Commission’s recommendations; clearly we cannot accept that. The calibre of people on the commission I don’t know what reason will make them say anything negative or anything to harm government, which is untrue. So they’ve absolutely no reason to engage in anything that will harm government except to make an impartial assessment on what happened at Ayawaso West Wuogon and to proffer equal recommendation to resolve it,” Chairman of the group, Mensah Thompson told Kasapa 102.5 Fm.
Government last week issued a 29-page White Paper on the report of the Emile short Commission of Inquiry into violence at Ayawaso West Wuogon constituency.
But the government accused the Commission of failing to address its main terms of reference.
“The Report failed to address the first and most critical of the terms of reference which was to make full, faithful and impartial inquiry into the circumstances of, and establish the facts, leading to the events and associated violence that occurred in the Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election in the 31st Day of January 2019,” government said in its White paper on the report.
However, Chairman of the coalition in an interaction with sit-in host Akwasi Nsiah on Anopa Kasapa on Kasapa questioned government’s decision not to accept most of the recommendations of the Ayawaso West Wougon by-elections report.
The CSOs intimated government’s posturing makes nonsense of the Vigilantism and Related Offenses Law and the peace dialogue especially when evidence of incidents on the violence at the Ayawaso West Wougon by-election have gone uncontested.
He added:” the issue is already with our Lawyers. We are exploring legal aspects of it and in the coming days we are going to use the legal aspect of it to ensure government withdraws this white paper and accept the findings of the report,”
