NPP ‘disappointed’ in NDC reprisal threats

The acting General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), John Boadu, has said his party is disappointed in the national executives of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) for calling on its members to retaliate if their members are attacked since the police have been called upon to deal with any acts of post-election violence.

His comment follows calls by Mr Kofi Portuphy, National Chairman of the NDC that the party will be left with no choice than to retaliate if attacks on its supporters by members of other parties persist.

Mr Portuphy, who spoke at a press conference in Accra on Thursday, December 15, admonished the leadership of the NPP to call their supporters to order following reports of attacks allegedly by supporters of the NPP following their victory in the December 7 polls.

He said they would be forced to defend themselves and respond in equal measure if authorities did not find a solution to the post-election violence.

“This is a democratic society and we don’t want to see such transitions, which occurred in places nearby, to happen in our country. We must be prepared to counsel our supporters, but anyone who is a citizen of this country who wants to behave as if he is in Cote d’Ivoire or Sierra Leone or Liberia will have a measure that he will not forget,” he said

But Mr Boadu, responding in an interview with Class 91.3FM’s Paa Kwesi Parker-Wilson, on the sidelines of the NPP’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting with President-elect Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on Thursday December 15 in Accra, said: “I thought that a good reasoning at this time of the year, when we have had a successful election that the president has conceded defeat and the president-elect has given his acceptance speech and the transition team has been put in place, will be in order.

“We the NPP believe in the rule of law and the protection of life and property, and so immediately we heard about some of these few things we issued a statement that the police should take charge. We are not violent people, we are not rowdy people, and we are not people that want to take the laws of our country into our own hands.

“We have given the mandate to the police, which already belongs to them to act, so I expect that a responsible political party that has lost an election so badly as they have done…would be sober. I least expected the national chairman of…NDC to be talking that way, because we are all one people that have one destiny that need to work together. I am so disappointed in them; I don’t expect a party that has lost so badly to be talking like this.”