COVID should not be used as a pretext to suppress citizens right to protest – Sammy Gyamfi

The National Communications Officer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Sammy Gyamfi, has added his voice to the ongoing displeasure expressed by a cross section of Ghanaians over the increasingly unbearing living conditions in the country.

Social media has, in the past few days, gone frenzy, with the hashtag, #FixtheCountry, which has subsequently become a movement against the seeming successive mismanagement of Ghana.

The movement which has been youth-led on social media platform, Twitter, has now morphed into a scheduled demonstration yet to take place on May 9, 2021.

A group of some 20 individuals who wrote to the police have received a negative feedback by the police about their intention to stage a protest.

Head of Public Affairs Unit of the Accra Regional Command of the Ghana Police Service, DSP Effia Tenge, says the planned demonstration will cumulate into a mass gathering which contravenes the imposition of restrictions instituted to manage the spread of COVID-19.

But Sammy Gyamfi in a reaction to the police directive said that the pandemic should not be used as a pretext to suppress the rights of citizens to protest peacefully.

“COVID should not be used as a pretext to suppress our inalienable right to peaceful assembly. It’s about time we had a national conversation about the constitutionality of the Imposition of Restrictions Act, 2020 (Act 1012) and the selective application of same,” Sammy Gyamfi wrote in a tweet.

See Sammy Gyamfi's tweet below:

COVID should not be used as a pretext to suppress our inalienable right to peaceful assembly. It’s about time we had a national conversation about the constitutionality of the Imposition of Restrictions Act, 2020 (Act 1012) and the selective application of same.

— Sammy Gyamfi (@SammyGyamfi2017) May 5, 2021