Dr Apaak To Political Parties: Prepare Your Supporters Mentally To Accept Supreme Court Ruling

The Convener of the Forum for Governance and Justice (FGJ), Dr. Clement Apaak has charged the National Peace Council and the National Media Commission (NMC) to drive into the citizenry the spirit of patriotism and nationalism. He called on the two bodies to create an avenue for the first respondent in the ongoing election case before the Supreme Court, President John Dramani Mahama and leader of the petitioners, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo, to make publicly their commitment to accept the verdict of the nine-member panel sitting on the case. Dr. Clement Apaak was speaking in an interview with Radio Gold on Wednesday. He stressed that it is vital for the NMC together with the Peace Council to get the President and the opposition leader to make pronouncements about their commitments to building national peace in order to defuse tensions in the public domain. “It’s very important that we all try from this time onwards to activate and move to the next level our spirit of patriotism and nationalism where we must now see ourselves as Ghanaian [first and foremost]. We must recognize that we have reached a point in the history of our nation which can make or break us but since we have decided to adopt and to apply the constitution as the only way of seeking redress as provided by the constitution itself that we prepare ourselves and we commit to accepting the outcome of the court.” Also, he wants all political parties to issue a communiqué to their leaders to educate their supporters and ‘prepare them mentally’ to accept the Supreme Court ruling in good faith “no matter how unpalatable it may be because the constitution gives us the right to resolve our differences in this and to continue to ensure that we maintain our national peace, unity and stability which in itself is a constitutional mandate.” He advised the entire nation to put “Ghana first and if we can have a peaceful united and stable Ghana, then we can address all our differences. We can jaw-jaw. We can agree to disagree by maintaining the status quo which would allow us to even have the opportunity to contest again even if it does not go our way this time around.”

Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana