The leading member of the Arise Ghana Movement Bernard Mornah, has said that the pressure group is preparing to rally Ghanaians to the streets in protest of the country’s rising hardships on 21 June 2022.
Arise Ghana is a civil society pressure group which seeks to employ legitimate and legal means of influencing public policy to shape the Ghanaian society.
“We are bringing the other side of the story that probably the policy makers are oblivious of and if they care they will then consider all these in shaping the destiny of our nation,” Mornah said.
Speaking on The Forum on Saturday (4 June) Mornah said: “We have gone on demonstrations one many times and it appears that our leaders and policy makers are not yielding anytime we go on the streets. They take it that it is one of the usual things, so initially to be honest with you, the group took the decision that we will be having a one week continuous demonstration.”
“But others thought that we should start and see the response of policy makers and we can then regroup and take a decision moving forward. This is just the beginning of a series of things to be manifested depending on the response of policy makers, particularly government, on some of the issues that we will be raising,” he told show host Dr Kwaku Agyeman-Budu.
Arise Ghana served notice to embark on a demonstration in Accra on Tuesday 21 June 2022.
“The reason for which we want to gather and sleep around Christ the King is that we believe that around the church the angels will be hovering around in the night so they can protect us. We want to test the limits of our democracy.”
Police protection
Mornah stated that after reading the letter demanding demonstrator security, the regional commander stated that they couldn’t guarantee a 48-hour demonstration since the police were stretched.
“The police cannot become the new dictators and threats of our democracy. The police is supposed to be notified of our routes and they have to make preparations to ensure that we embark on our routes. The police have no right to say how long our protestation should last.
“The fact that the police say that they cannot provide that security doesn’t stop us from embarking on our demonstration. We have notified them; it is for them to come and do their duty.
“Except they are telling me that the Ghana Police is so incompetent that they are not able to rally themselves in other to contain a situation as minimum as this,” Mornah said.
Fix the country demo
Sharing his thoughts on the “FixTheCountry” intended armed demonstration, Mornah said: “It is pretty unfortunate that we can get to the extent of saying we are going to do a demonstration where we are going to arm ourselves. I do not support ammunition of any nature.”
“I am a lover and a respecter of our democracy. And so to any extent I will stand by our democracy. So to go on a demonstration carrying arms is no more a demonstration, it is a call to war. And I think that my colleagues went overboard on this matter.
“I sympathise with the issues they want to go on a public manifestation. But you see why are people opting for the private security instead of the Ghana Police Service? That is a duty under the public order act to come and supervise the demonstration because the Ghana Police Service is increasingly losing its credibility as the police service of Ghana and has become a partisan institution,” he said.
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