The General Secretary of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketiah has charged lawyers within the party to interpret the laws at polling stations to ease electoral malpractices as the country is heading towards the 2024 general elections.
According to him, unity among the NDC legal team has helped erase the notion that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has more experienced practising lawyers than the other parties.
Mr Asiedu Nketiah congratulated the legal team for their enormous support in assisting the party on several electoral cases and urged them to do all.
Speaking at the 2nd Annual Lawyers Conference held at Ada in the Greater Accra Region, Mr Asiedu Nketiah lauded the legal team for their unflinching and dedicated support to the party.
The conference was on the theme: ‘‘NDC @ 30, the past, present and future the role of the NDC lawyers’’.
The astute General Secretary thanked the affiliated lawyers for rallying behind NDC as they were denied any opportunity in participating in state business.
He said that there is a need for the NDC to come out with a program to tackle elections management and how elections are run in the country toward the upcoming general elections.
He added that the NDC legal team have delivered to the satisfaction of the party adding that the NDC also have men.
‘‘It’s fine to interpret the law nicely when you are at the polling stations but if your colleagues are turning the law upside down to get what they want; you must also educate our people that when the going get tough the tough must kept going so we do not allow ourselves to be humiliated,’’ Mr Asiedu Nketiah said.
‘‘We were aware of the intimidation you suffer in your profession, the leaders of your profession and the judiciary have told you that if you appear before certain judges, they prejudged your case because you are not with a certain group. So if you are a lawyer and your judges have become biased against you, then it represents a huge cost to your reputation and many other weights. So we can’t help but to thank you for still standing firm,’’ said Asiedu Nketiah.
He said that they are not surprised because people who are faced with common threats become more bonded together than the people who are faced with a common love for a particular thing.
‘‘We are very happy that you bonding together but in the past, the nature of our philosophy of providing equal opportunities to all Ghanaians intended to have an impact on us in such a way that when we are in power if it is a state business we give the opportunity to everybody, in many other respect appointments all other we give equal opportunity to everybody.
But that type of equal opportunity for everybody against the background inequality itself generates problems. If you actually want to be fair you must support somebody who is disadvantaged or who has a historical disadvantage to come up before you begin fairness,’’ he affirmed.
Mr Asiedu Nkatia averred that the obligation to ensure that some positive discrimination is applied when they come to power in order to bring everybody to power and then beyond that, they can begin to be fair to everybody.
Source: Mybrytnewsroom.com/Solomon Nartey
