Oppong-Fosu decries silence on Bryan Acheampong’s attitude

Akwasi Oppong-Fosu, a former Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, has bemoaned the silence of civil society organisations (CSOs) and moral institutions on the attitude of Bryan Acheampong, Minister of State at the Ministry for the Interior.

Mr Acheampong, the former Deputy Minister of National Security at the presidency, who was in charge of operations during the Ayawaso West Wuogon bye-election in the Greater Accra Region, violence in January 2019, rubbished the recommendations of the Justice Emile Short Commission that probed the circumstances that led to the mayhem.

The Commission recommended that Mr Acheampong be reprimanded for superintending the dastardly act that was perpetrated by pro- New Patriotic Party (NPP) vigilante groups in police uniform but Mr Acheampong, who is also the Member of Parliament (MP) for Abetifi in the Eastern Region called the recommendations “bogus” a few days after he was reassigned to the ministry.

But Mr Oppong-Fosu noted that although he wasn’t surprised at the attitude and assertions of Mr Acheampong, he however, decried the silence of the media and CSOs on the issue as such a person could be threat to the peace, stability and unity of the country as she prepares for polls in December 7, 2020, saying “it’s a spat on the face of the Justice Emile Short Commission.

“This comes after the government’s dismissiveness of key recommendations of the report and the respected Justice Short accepting to chair another controversial Eminent Persons Advisory Council of the Electoral Commission (EC) which happens when persons by virtue of positions they occupy and having been accorded respect and moral authority in society choose to put a price on themselves instead of a value.

“The price may include financial inducements, recognition and fulfillment of some ethnocentric, partisan and class identity bigotry because we face similar situation of indifference and consequence, an existential threat to our democratic governance, peace, stability, unity growth and development.

“We have a situation where group of criminal masterminds masquerading in ranks of political party machinery are controlling levers of state power with sole motivation to build financial empires and generational wealth, institutions are insidiously being corrupted and any signs of dissent crushed through levers of power they control which further breeds sycophants, blackmailers and extortionists in moral society,” Mr Oppong-Fosu lamented. -XYZ