After spending hours at the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), the National Chairman of the People’s National Convention (PNC), Mr Bernard Mornah has been granted bail.
He has been charged charged with offensive conduct and would report to the police once every two weeks on Tuesdays as investigations continue.
Mr Mornah was invited by the police over some comments he made with regard to the Electoral Commission’s decision to compile a new voter roll ahead of the 2020 polls.
He had said at a press conference on May 26, 2020 that: “We’ll beat and kill each other” should confusion arise at any voter ID card registration centre during the forthcoming exercise, thus, his invitation by the police.
He was at the CID Headquarters Tuesday morning with members of the Inter-Party Resistance Against the New Voters’ Register (IPRAN), which he leads and other followers including top executives of the National Democratic Congress.
Addressing a large crowd after he was discharged, Mr Mornah maintained he still stands by his words.
“We shall not allow our freedoms in any form to be trampled by any person. President Nana Akufo-Addo cannot stifle the freedoms that we are granted by the Constitution. Those freedoms include the freedom to speak and we will speak. We will dare them and we will speak the truth because, at all point in time, we must correct the ills in our society which if we don’t correct, has the potential of eroding the peace and stability of our nation,” he said.
“This afternoon, I have just gone through a cordial process with the police. My statement is that I made the statements that are contained in the 37-second video and that I stand by those statements and I have nothing more to add… The EC must know that their actions have the potential to plunge this nation into calamity. We are cautioning them that if they do not heed to us and anything happens to this country, they will not be safe,” he said to the media and supporters who massed up around him at the CID headquarters.
Ahead of his invitation, the Ghana Police Service deployed special forces to its headquarters on the same day of the meeting. Clad in red and black attire members of the IIPRAN were also at the CID Headquarters to show solidarity.
Placard-wielding sympathizers of Mr Mornah indicated their resolve to resist the EC’s decision to compile the new voter roll.
Some read: “The EC must listen”, “Enough of your Dictatorship,” “Stop Manipulating the EC,” among others.
Deputy General Secretary of the NDC, Peter Boamah Otokunor said: “We are not in normal times you don’t expect normal things…all of us will stay here and we will continue chanting and singing. Nobody will stop us from speaking our mind,”
Political parties and CSOs in Ghana are sharply divided over plans by the EC to compile a new voter roll.
Already some individuals have been questioned by the CID for making some comments which many say could cause chaos ahead of the country’s general elections.
By Jonathan Ofori, Daily Mail GH
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