President, Chief Justice Should Be Held Liable For Breaching COVID Protocols - Opare Addo

The National Youth Organizer of the NDC George Opare Addo, has also condemned the disregard for COVID-19 protocols at the funeral of the late CEO of the Forestry Commission, Mr Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie aka Sir John by the mourners and including the President and the Chief Justice Anin-Yeboah who attended. Mr Opare Addo also

said, President Akufo Addo as the Commander In Chief who also made the law on COVID-19 to safeguard the country and the Chief Justice who is the head too of the judiciary for convicting the offenders of the protocols should be held liable too for flouting the laws they were supposed to protect. He also said that if the state have

prosecuted offenders of the Imposition of Restrictions Act (IRA) like the Christ Embassy saga and many other individuals who have also fallen victim to the breach of the COVID-19 protocols then the President, the Chief Justice and the NPP echelons who were all also at the congested funeral at the late former General Secretary

of party must also equally be held liable for the blatant breach. Mr Opare Addo made this call in an interview on Wednesday, June 9. He was speaking on the back of the flagrant disregard for the COVID-19 protocols at the funeral of the former Chief Executive Officer CEO of the Forestry Commission Mr Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie at his

hometown of Sakora Wonoo in the Ashanti Region over the weekend that has generated a lot of uproar in the country. When people say the system is well working elsewhere, it is because there is certainty, our difficulty and challenge in this country is that there are two sets of laws for people in this country. What do I mean? A

clear case is what we saw in Sakora Wonoo, where the President himself led a ‘brigade of lawless Ghanaians’ to also participate in a funeral. Right from the word go, everybody who attended that funeral knew that that funeral was not meant for 25 or 50 people because you see, the stage was set, the number of canopies were

erected, the number of chairs that put out there, clearly the organizers of that funeral did not intend to comply with the COVID-19 protocols, he stated. He added if I am going to bury a beloved person and I know there is COVID and the law mandates me not to have more 50 people at the programme and then I erect canopies that

has the potential of taking on board a thousand and I also rent more than 500 chairs, clearly right from the beginning of it, I did not intend to go by the law, that is what we should all understand and when a President is coming to a community, the day before, the first team comes to do what is called the Recce (reconnaissance),

to survey the environment to make sure everything is in place also. The morning of the programme, there is an advance military team that comes to do the same job and then make sure that even the chair the President will sit on and everything is in place. Nobody can tell me these processes did not take place, what message did

they rally back to tell the President? The mere fact that the canopies were mounted, the number of canopies we also see on the screens right now that were set out, the number of chairs that have been put out there, clearly should have told the President that there was no way they were going to observe the protocol. Leadership is

by example, if you are asking me not to bury my dead in the way that traditionally we do it, then I expect same from the leader also. Because you see, immediately the leader flouts that law and he breaks that law, you also cannot hold me accountable if I disrespect that law in future. Unfortunately for us as a people that is what has

become the norm, so people in this government have become laws unto themselves. If the the President can attend a funeral and this happens and nobody is going to say anything, why is Ghana Health not speaking, why the Minister of Health is not speaking, why the Ghana police never went there to disperse them? The police

commander himself was there, so now when you go to court, the man at the apex was there so I don’t know how morally anybody can charge anybody for a breach of the COVID-19 protocols. The President and the Chief Justice, we should blame them squarely because the Chief Justice cannot exonerate himself from this ever.

Because you see, in all this where do we seek redress, the courts, who sits at the apex of the court? The Chief Justice, so imagine the police decides to charge the Chief Justice, let’s grant it that the police decides to charge the Chief Justice too, and let’s grant it that they cannot charge the President because he appoints the

IGP but the police decides to charge the Chief Justice, and they should be able if our laws were working. If we want our systems to work, leadership by example, what we also expect President Akufo-Addo to do, if not for anything, is to apologise to the country and what moral right does President Akufo-Addo have to say anything about funerals in his next address. The President must show leadership, he charged.