AFAG not given up on demonstration

Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG), a pressure group, has not given up its intended demonstration to protest against deteriorating living conditions and the disregard for rule of law in the country.
At a press conference in Accra yesterday it disclosed that it would soon communicate to the police and the general public when it will embark on the intended demonstration.
It said although the President had intervened despite a court order restraining them from undertaking the demonstration, they would not heed the President’s intervention because it amounted to subversion of the Constitution.
Mr Godfred Dame, Head of Legal Affairs of AFAG, who disclosed this at the press conference described the President’s call on the police to provide demonstrators with protection to embark on their demonstration as amounting to trying to gain political capital “even at the real risk of subverting the Constitution and the rule of law.”
Explaining why the alliance was calling the President’s action as an act of subversion, he explained that as required by law, the alliance duly notified the police of its intention to embark on demonstration on July 2, 2009, but the police came up with a litany of excuses to prohibit it from exercising their constitutional rights.
He said on June 26, 2009 the Attorney General sought an ex part motion order at a High Court, restraining AFAG from demonstrating.
He added that, however, on the afternoon of the same day, the President through the Ministry of Information, called on the police to protect the protesters even though a court had restrained the AFAG from demonstrating.
Mr Dame commended the President for the directive but said “we would respectively like to point out that what the President purported to do is completely unlawful and has the propensity to undermine the spirit and letter of the Constitution”.
“We seriously deprecate the attempt by his Excellency the President to reserve unto himself the prerogative of either approving or disapproving the exercise of a citizen’s fundamental human rights which is an inalienable rights and specifically enshrined in the Constitution”, he added.
He explained that the effect of what the President had done was that he had rendered the exercise of a citizen’s rights subject to his pleasure, fiat or official permission.
According to Mr Dame, the alliance had now found an explanation to the recent arbitrary arrest, curtailment of citizen’s freedom of movement and other fundamental human rights, because “the pleasure of the President is what dictates whether a citizen can exercise these fundamental human rights or not”.
He said as law abiding citizens, members of the alliance had faith in the rule of law and due process and would consequently respect the orders of a court of competent jurisdiction.
A member of the group, Ms Frances Asiam, expressed worry that the President who was briefed daily about the security situation in the country would act as if he did not know that his principal legal advisor, the Attorney General, had sought a court order to restrain the members of the alliance from embarking on demonstration.