Former Member of Parliament for La-Dadekotopon Constituency Nii Amasa Namoale has called on the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) to tolerate divergent religion in the country.
The former MP said the suspension of some delegates who invoked curses on some party executives amounts to autocracy and the violation of their constitutional rights.
The ruling party on Monday instructed constituency executives to suspend, with immediate effect, all delegates who invoked curses on leadership over the disqualification of some parliamentary aspirants.
These delegates of the party resorted to invoking deities to register their dissatisfaction with the national executives for not allowing some aspirants to contest and others to be contested.
According to some of them, the grounds for disqualification of some of these aspirants were not legitimate and just a move to ensure that incumbent Members of Parliament, in particular, go unopposed.
In the Offinso South Constituency, for instance, some delegates slaughtered a ram in River Offin and performed some rituals after they complained that the National Vetting Committee is scheming to have incumbent MP Ben Abdallah Banda go unopposed.
But addressing a press conference on Monday, June 8, General Secretary John Boadu said all those delegates stand suspended.
Reacting to the issue on Onua TV’s Maakye hosted by Bright Kwasi Asempa on Tuesday, Nii Amasa Namoale explained that the Article 21(a) and (c) of the 1992 Constitution provide respectively that “all persons shall have the right to: freedom of thought, conscience and belief, which shall include academic freedom and [the] freedom to practise any religion and to manifest such practice”.
He said “the NPP should tolerate them because that is their belief. The constitution enshrines freedom of religion and not oppressor’s rule”.
A parliamentary aspirant for the Tema West Constituency in the upcoming NPP primaries, Kwasi Opoku, who was also on the programme, urged the party leadership not to shun what the delegates are agitating for but rather listen to their grievances and address them accordingly instead of suspension.
By Kweku Antwi-Otoo|3news.com|Ghana