Director of Communications for the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Richard Ahiagbah, says utterances made by former president, John Mahama, concerning recruiting NDC party faithful into the security services is in violation of the law and must be condemned.
NDC flagbearer aspirant, John Mahama, on his campaign trail in the Northern Region told party faithful his government will recruit their children and young party members into the security services.
“Our people, our branch executives’ children, you just stand by. If we’re distributing any jobs, if we’re recruiting people into the police, the army, the prisons service, the fire service and the immigration, we will recruit all our young people too to go and work,” he said.
According to Mr. Ahiagbah, such a statement is unlawful and very dangerous.
“If there is anything obvious about what he [John Mahama] said, then it is his violation of an obvious law that actually preclude any party or any government from proceeding along the lines of building a partisan security force. And so that really is what I find very dangerous about what the former president said,” he said on JoyNews’ PM Express.
He stated that accusations that the ruling party has been filling the rank and file of the security services with its own party faithful, why denying others recruitment and promotion opportunities are unfounded.
“I find that very preposterous. How do you do that? Where is the evidence? And I think that if something like this has happened, I think she should take it up,” he said.
He said that even if the accusations were the case, it is laughable that the NDC instead of suggesting a solution to halt the practice entirely are rather campaigning on the promise of entrenching the practice in their favour.
“Now the positioning and the posturing that something untoward has happened or something wrong has happened and as a result of it we’re going to break the law, for me I find that very laughable and in building a democratic institution we shouldn’t be having this conversation,” he said.
“I think that the former president misspoke. If I were speaking for him that will be my position – that he misspoke and that is not what he intends, try to explain and put a better spin on this. But to entrench your position to say that ‘yes, we say that and we mean it’, I find it very disturbing,” he added.