Law against impunity must work; Security agencies urged to crack whip
The Chairman of the National Peace Council, the Most Reverend Emmanuel Asante, has called on the security agencies to crack the whip as a way of dealing with the growing culture of impunity in the country.
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He said the use of intemperate language would only serve to undermine the country’s democratic culture and that the law ought to be made to work.
Speaking to the Daily Graphic on threats made on the lives of judges by some panellists on a radio discussion programme, he said: “There is too much impunity in the system, but once we begin to crack the whip, sanity will prevail.”
No politicisation of issues
The Most Rev. Asante, however, cautioned against the politicisation of issues when it came to the application of the law, saying there had always been the tendency to politicise matters when action was taken against people who had misconducted themselves.
“But the surest means of ensuring sanity in people’s utterances, as the country approaches the election, is to make the relevant security agencies work, without the politicisation of the actions they take against those who choose to be deviant,” he said.
He described the threat against the judges as very unfortunate, saying it undermined the capacity of the institutions that ensured the proper functioning of multiparty democracy.
Respect for institutions
“It appears that once people’s wishes are not met, then that becomes an issue, but I think democracy thrives on the basis of the institutions that we have in place. We need stronger institutions in place to facilitate democracy,” he said.
He said the Judiciary, like other institutions, had been put in place by the people of Ghana to ensure the progress of democracy and so circumspection ought to be considered in criticisms against that institution.
The Most Rev. Asante said against the backdrop of the history of the murdered judges, loose utterances by panellists should actively engage the attention of the relevant security agencies for the necessary actions to be taken to forestall similar incidents that would threaten the peace of the country.
He urged Ghanaians to allow the country’s democracy to work, adding that “if our democracy is going to function, it will come about when we have respect for the institutions that we ourselves have put in place, and once we do that, I believe our democracy will be facilitated”.