Police just fear-mongering, thinking our demo will turn into military coup – Mahama Ayariga

Member of Parliament for Bawku Central Constituency Mahama Ayariga says the Minority members in Parliament have marched on the same route in the past in a demonstration that was peaceful and “very successful”.

He said the same police provided protection.

Therefore, he finds it difficult to accept why the police say they cannot provide same security this time around.

For him, the police are only engaging in fear-mongering and using intimidation to suppress them.

He made this known on Monday, September 4 while speaking on Ghana Tonight on TV3.

It follows a decision by an Accra High Court to rule on an objection raised by the MPs against an interim injunction application filed by the Accra Regional Command of the Ghana Police Service over the planned demonstration against the Governor of the Bank of Ghana and his two deputies.

The demonstration was originally planned for Tuesday, September 5 but due to the decision by the Court to rule on the Minority’s objection on Friday, September 8, it has been rescheduled to Tuesday, September 12.

Mr Ayariga told host Alfred Ocansey that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) MPs will comply with any decision taken by the court on Friday.

“We are law-abiding citizens,” he said. “These are Members of Parliament, we make the law [so] we cannot be in the forefront of saying that we will not comply with any court decision but we are saying that we are very confident that the court will not revise the route because there is nothing wrong with the route.”

The demonstration, dubbed #OccuoyBOGProtest, is expected to start from the frontage of Parliament House through the Osu Cemetery Traffic Light, Ministry of Finance, High Court Complex, Kinbu, Makola, Rawlings Park, Opera Square and end up at the Bank of Ghana.

For the Bawku Central MP, there is no problem with this route and the police are only fear-mongering.

“It is just the police that are trying to engage in fear-mongering and intimidatory tactics and telling people that there is a fear that there will be a military coup and it is the demonstration that will serve as a basis for a military coup.

“That is just fear-mongering. That is intimidation tactics that they are using and the rest of us cannot allow the police to fail to perform their basic responsibility and use threats of military coup as the reason why we should allow them not to perform their basic responsibility.

“In the past, we have marched along the same route with the same police providing us with the support and the marches have been very peaceful and very successful and so you can’t tell us that today you have lost that capacity to be able to police us to march along the same routes.”