The Senior Programmes Manager at the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Paul Abrampah Mensah, intimates that there is the need for lots of electoral violence sensitization for citizens.
Speaking on the electoral violence cases which haven’t been attended to, he stated that during the 2020 election, his outfit undertook peace education programmes where it realized that the commitment by government to develop the vigilante and related offence act was not complete to help educate the public.
“A lot needs to be done. There was no knowledge about the existence of the law and its implications. No state agency has picked up the law to educate and sensitize the youth as to the new law that has taken over in terms of the visibility of the functions as against the criminal code.”
Paul Abroampah Mensah
The Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) further appealed to the Attorney General and Ghana Police Service to expedite action on the pending cases of electoral violence from the 2020 General elections.
Paul Abroampah Mensah posited that this is per the recommendations of its latest report on the validation of cases of electoral violence associated with election in 2020.
According to the CDD report, 8 persons lost their lives with about 20 people sustaining various degree of injury. The report indicated that although some of the cases were not officially reported, the ones which were reported have some in court with other still undergoing investigations.
The report also stated that some of the victims are not following up with the cases due to their reason of not trusting the judicial sytem to deliver justice on their behalf.
Victims waiting on security agency briefing
According to Paul Mensah, his outfit in an engagement with the victims revealed that they are rather waiting for the security agencies to brief them on the status of the report but are not interested in going to the Police station to find out.
“It is interesting to also know that the victims who are alive and the families did not on their own make a complaint but rather the security personnel who were at the scenes who followed up to make arrests and also start the process.”
Paul Abroampah Mensah
The CDD Senior Programmes Manager indicated that the victims and families are just not interested in what is happening to the Police cases but rather prefer revenge when their political parties come into power. He averred that the victims plan to revenge is the dangerous aspect the CDD wants to deal with.
Touching on the factors leading to the delay in the cases, Paul Mensah disclosed that although most of the cases have been sent to court, they have not even started the hearing of the cases. He added the postponement of the cases as another factor causing the delay.
“So there are so many reasons that investigations of some of the cases have delayed, those from the Attorney General’s office we are not even hearing about them with the exception of few after almost two years of the election.”
Paul Abroampah Mensah
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