AFAG demonstrates against economic policies

Alliance For Accountable Governance (AFAG), a pressure group yesterday staged a four-hour demonstration to register what they called “their displeasure and disappointment about the harsh economic policies of the Mills Administration”.
Dubbed: “Ahokyere Demonstration”, the demonstrators marched through some principal streets of Accra, from the Kwame Nkrumah Circle to the Hearts of Oak Park near the Arts Centre in Accra.
Wearing red dresses, red arm-bands and mourning cloth, the demonstrators carried placards some of which read, “Prof. do little go back to the classroom”, “ 2012 is just around the corner”, “We can’t buy petrol, Atta had deceived us”, “Better Ghana is now Bitter Ghana”, “Castle boys are chopping” and “Mills-Mahama NDC 419 PART 3”.
The demonstration which was generally peaceful was led by some leading members of AFAG, including Messrs Kwabena Bonfeh, Sammy Awuku and Martin Adjei Mensah Korsah as well as some Members of Parliament (MP) including Mr Dan Kweku Botwe, MP for Okere; Mr Domnic Nitiwul, MP for Bimbila; Mr Issac Asiama, MP for Atwima Mponua; Mr Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah, MP for Takoradi and Mr Fredrick Opare-Ansah, MP for Suhum.
Although there was heavy police presence, the demonstrators in some instances tried to veer off the agreed route.
For instance, at the TUC junction, but for the steadfastness of the police, the demonstrators would have gone through Accra Polytechnic and Novotel, which were not part of the agreed route.
Addressing the crowd at the Hearts of Oak Park, a leading member of AFAG, Mr Abu Ramadan, said the “Mills led-government had remained very insensitive to the plights and predicaments of the suffering masses, especially after imposing unbearable hardship on them as a result of the recent fuel price increases and the introduction of killer taxes,”
He said the National Democratic Congress (NDC), which promised a better Ghana agenda had failed woefully to deliver on its promises, which made the people to vote for it.
He said currently, there was a general consensus among Ghanaians that the President was running away from the details and commitments of his party’s manifesto which had now been labelled as the “Ma Trickie wo Manifesto”.
He said instead of accepting that they have failed Ghanaians and ask for understanding, they were rather compounding the problems and the hardships by resorting to “infantile palliative and blame game.”
According to Mr Ramadan, AFAG and its allies would not stop demonstrating until the President dealt with the NDC foot soldiers who are chasing away district chief executives and closing NHIS and National Youth Employment offices.
He said the demonstration would also go on until the President became sensitive to the suffering and difficulty that his policies had brought to trotro drivers, market women, civil servants and the entire Ghanaian population.