Protect the courts and the EC from elected autocrats, says Asiedu Nketia

Johnson Asiedu Nketia, the General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has called for the protection of all state institutions from the potential capture of elected autocrats.

Most of the time, he says, these leaders see institutions as limiting their power, so they want complete control over them.

The Electoral Commission (EC), the courts, the tax authorities, and the media are among the institutions that the leaders would like to control, according to him.

“The institutions we’re talking about, the courts are very important, the media are very important, other civil society organizations, the Electoral Commission, the tax authorities, Parliament,” Mr Asiedu Nketia said in an interview with journalists on the sidelines of a forum organized by the Institute of Democratic Governance (IDEG) on Friday April 22.

“These are institutions that are calibrated in a democracy to regulate the use of power and check abuse of power, but when they fall into the hands of autocrats, they begin capturing, compromising, and weakening them because autocrats want to see those institutions as limitations on their power, or incumbrances that need to be removed.”