‘We’ve glorified violence in this country for so long’ – Dr Kwesi Aning

A Security Analyst, Dr Kwesi Aning has bemoaned that Ghanaians have glorified violence for so long that it has been embed into our sub-consciousness in a manner that when a threat is issued, it no more generate into violence.

According to him, there is an everydayness to violence “…I’ll kill you…..I’ll shoot you…I’ll deal with you…do you know who I am…you wait and see,” have been captured by the behaviour of former representatives of political parties and individual leaders who may be supporters of that party.

Testifying at the Short Commission of inquiry last Monday, Dr Aning noted that irrespective of which political group forms these political militias, “in no political documentation in this country will you find advocacy for political violence.”

“No manifesto since the 1950s all the way until the manifestos for the 2016 elections, nobody has written it down. But if we take the statements from political party leaders, the glorifying language, the discourses that seek to dispel what they have said, trivialises and romanticises violence,” Dr Aning explained.



Background

The Justice Emile Short Commission of inquiry was set up by the President of Ghana following the violence that transpired during the Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election o January 31, 2019.

The four-member commission has Mr Justice Emile Short as Chairman, with Professor Henrietta Mensah-Bonsu and Mr Patrick K. Acheampong as members.

A former Dean of the Faculty of Law of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) and a private legal practitioner, Mr Ernest Kofi Abotsi, is the Secretary to the commission.

Terms of reference

A statement signed and issued by the Communications Director at the Presidency, Mr Eugene Arhin, yesterday clearly spelt out the terms of reference of the commission.

They include to make a full, faithful and impartial enquiry into the circumstances of, and establish the facts leading to, the events and associated violence during the Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election; to identify any person responsible for or who has been involved in the events, the associated violence and injuries; to inquire into any matter which it considers incidental or reasonably related to the causes of the events and the associated violence and injuries; to submit within one month its report to the President, giving reasons for its findings and recommendations, including appropriate sanctions, if any.