We’re proactive to mandate - Peace Council assures stakeholders
The Chairman of the National Peace Council (NPC), Rev. Dr Ernest Adu-Gyamfi has described the council as proactive and alive to its mandate in facilitating and developing mechanisms for conflict prevention, management, resolution and building sustainable peace in the country.
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Contrary to claims by some stakeholders that the NPC was reactionary, he said the council always facilitated the development of mechanisms for cooperation among all relevant stakeholders in peacebuilding as required by the statutes setting it up.
“When people get frustrated in this country, the next thing is to find out who they can blame and the NPC comes in handy,” he said.
Rev. Dr Adu-Gyamf spoke to journalists last Monday on the sidelines of a National Peace Council trust-building programme and inter and Intraparty mechanism for addressing conflict at Miosto in the Greater Accra Region.
It formed part of a series of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) workshops for political parties throughout the country.
He urged the public to understand the mandate of the council as stipulated by the law instead of blaming the council for not being proactive.
“Our objective, as the foremost peace-building institution in Ghana, has been to have political parties that have the capacity to address their internal party differences any time such differences arise with well-established internal party mechanisms.”
Representatives of political parties at the workshop welcomed the intervention by the NPC, describing it as timely as such dialogues at the incipient stages would enhance the knowledge and skills of political parties in addressing inter and intra-party conflicts.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) was represented by its Director for Conflict Resolution, Abraham Amaliba; the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Deputy Communications Director, Asiedu Kokuro; the General Secretary of the Peoples’ National Convention, Janet Nabla; the General Secretary of the Progressive Peoples’ Party, Remy Paa Kow Edmundson, and the General Secretary of the Great Consolidated Popular Party, Citizen Ato Dadzie.
Cape Coast
At a similar workshop in Cape Coast, Shirley Asiedu-Addo reports that the Chairman of the Central Regional Peace Council, Rt Rev. Richardson Aboagye Andam stated that it would be detrimental if political actors became complacent towards promoting peace.
"The key is sustenance.
We cannot be complacent with our efforts at sustaining the nation's peace, particularly as we get into the electioneering period," he stated.
Rt Rev. Andam, therefore, urged political actors to be mindful of acts that tended to disrupt the nation's peace this election year.
He said actions and utterances of political actors must promote peace and not incite acts of violence.
Analysis
A Peace and Development lecturer at the Department of Peace Studies of the University of Cape Coast, Dr Patrick Osei Kufuor, explained that using the Position, Interests and Needs (PIN) model to analyse conflicts would help mediators understand the real causes of conflicts.
