Story: Reuben Sackey 

The  National Women’s Organizer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Dr Hannah Bissiw says the call on political parties by the  National Peace Council to ensure that the December 7 elections is peaceful  smacks of hypocrisy.

According to the NDC’s women leader, four members of her party   were shot during the Assin North bye-election last year but the Peace could not call on President Akufo-Addo to bring the perpetrators of that heinous crime to book. 

To this end, the outspoken politician Bissiw warned, however, that going into the 2024 general elections, the NDC would not sit back for such incidents to occur and that despite standing for peace, the party would react if they were touched.

“We went to Assin North and if you care to know, four of our guys were shot, as a political party we decided not to make noise about it. We carried them to the hospital and said we would walk over the dead and win the election,” she told a National Peace Council stakeholder conference .

“In front of some of us, they came down and launched on some of our guys, we restrained them but we are not going to restrain anybody anymore,” she warned.

“So, if you talk about peace, respectfully, if we do not want to downplay things that must not be downplayed in this country… let’s tackle it from where the problem is,” she stressed demanding that the Council follow up on instances of political violence under this government.

The Assin North bye-election was triggered by the ouster of NDC’s Gyakye Quayson via a Supreme Court ruling.

He was deemed to have flouted application processes leading to the 2020 vote. He was fielded by the NDC and he trounced the New Patriotic Party (NPP) candidate to retain his seat.

The National Peace Council Stakeholders  Conference was aimed at building a national consensus for peaceful elections in 2024. It  brought together representatives of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), the National Democratic Congress (NDC), the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP), the Liberal Party of Ghana (LPG), the National Democratic Party (NDP) and the Ghana Union Movement (GUM).

It was organised by the NPC with sponsorship from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the International Republican Institute (IRI), an international non-governmental organisation.

The meeting also adopted the recommendations of the Peduase Stock-Taking Conference held in December 2023.

Key among the recommendations was the need for the Judiciary to expedite action on addressing the issue of time limit in resolving parliamentary election disputes.