The National Peace Council has issued a caution against involving the courts and state institutions in politically sensitive talks.
The Council feels that such engagement jeopardises the integrity of these institutions, causing a drop in public trust and potentially upsetting the nation’s peace.
During a Peace Dialogue with stakeholders in Accra on Tuesday, Ernest Adu Gyamfi, Chairman of the National Peace Council, urged the people to support state institutions in their efforts to maintain peace, underlining the need of these institutions being neutral.
“Last Sunday, the president of the Bar Association made a clear statement that politicians should not bring politics into our judicial system. Cases go to court. You either put up a good case or not. And if you lose a case, you don’t go to the media and start making noise. You know, get a good case.”
“We’ve had situations where the government has lost cases, haven’t we? We’ve had it. So if we’ve had those situations, why do we then think that every case that somebody loses is because somebody has paid somebody? So we keep getting all these things and it gives the judiciary bad publicity.”
“But I think that the institutions of peace and justice in this country must be protected and when I talk about [them] I talk about peace council, electoral commission, the judiciary.
“These institutions must be protected. The public must know that if we run these institutions down, there’ll be trouble. You know, these are things that everybody must be worried about once we see these things going on. And we think we need to rise and defend these institutions,” he stated.
