General News of Monday, 29 June 2020
Source: www.ghanaweb.live
2020-06-29Not sanctioning NPP members for flouting coronavirus protocols ‘shameful’ – Apaak tells Akufo-Addo
Dr. Clement Apaak, Builsa South MP
Dr. Clement Apaak, the Builsa South MP, has chastised President Akufo-Addo for just scolding members of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) for flouting COVID-19 protocols during their primaries.
He described the president’s lack of firm action as very ‘shameful’ in an open letter addressed to the president on Sunday, June 28,
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Dr Apaak's abhorrence to the president's 'mild rebuke' stems from the fact that some members of the public having conducted similar offences have been prosecuted and jailed.
“Having the opportunity to address the nation a day after the NPP Primaries on 21st June, the President failed to mention the unfortunate show of impunity by his party folk. Indeed, many videos and pictures that were circulated, showed identifiable faces, which should [pose] no difficulty [to] law enforcement to identify culprits, if the President wished to apply the law,” Dr. Apaak said.
“But, as expected, a week on, the President, having grabbed another opportunity to address the issue, after a week of open criticism from a cross-section of Ghanaians, to the effect of discriminating against some class of Ghanaians, President Akufo-Addo shamefully pardoned his party members for openly offending his own law,” he described in his letter.
Dr Apaak added, "To close churches and order citizens about in a certain manner without same applying to his party members, smacks of hypocrisy, divisiveness, and is detrimental to national unity."
President Akufo-Addo during his acclamation by his party on Saturday, June 27, 2020, admitted that his party, the NPP, failed to fully comply with some of the COVID-19 preventive measures during its parliamentary primaries and admonished them not to let that repeat itself again.
“This past weekend, our party came to the end of the processes that we have to go through to prepare for the elections in December to prepare (sic) for the primaries in constituencies where we have sitting MPs. Unfortunately, in our enthusiasm and sheer unbridled joy, we broke some of the COVID-19 safety protocols. It should not happen again.”
