Attacks on state installations must stop now

Last Wednesday, Members of Parliament (MPs) joined civil society groups and a cross-section of the media to strongly condemn the seizure of public institutions across the country by some youth following the change in government.

Subsequently, the House urged the police to treat the seizure of public institutions as a crime and punish the perpetrators, regardless of their political affiliations.

The call comes on the heels of an earlier editorial by the Daily Graphic which questioned the whereabouts of the Ghana Police Service in the midst of all these disturbing incidents.

Yesterday, there were reports from some parts of the country about some organised groups of people going on the rampage again to destroy food meant for schoolchildren under the Ghana School Feeding Programme.

The Daily Graphic finds these incidents not only shameful and unfortunate but a minus for a country which touts itself as the beacon of democracy on the African continent. If people belonging to the party in power will use force to take over state-run institutions, among other things, then we must voice our condemnation of behaviours that tend to send us to the state of nature.

One reason the unlawful acts persist is because of the blame game from the two leading political parties. There should be no justification whatsoever for any of these acts to be perpetrated because two wrongs never make a right.

At almost 60 years, our democracy and country must be seen to outgrow such pettiness, greed and lawlessness and move forward. The change we witnessed on January 7, 2017 was not a coup détat but change desired by majority of the people in freely conducted elections. The takeover of state assets has no place in our statutes.

While we commend the House for collectively condemning the acts, we entreat individual MPs to reach out to their constituents to dissuade them from such unlawful acts.

We once again call on the police to arrest and deal ruthlessly with the perpetrators of such acts without fear or favour. While at it, we also prevail on politicians who go behind the scenes to put unnecessary pressure on the police to release those arrested because the culprits play roles in their parties to desist from such disgraceful acts and allow the law to work.

The Daily Graphic calls on the government to ensure that appointments to public institutions such as those being attacked are done not on party lines but through a competitive process. We believe that if people go through competitive recruitment processes to secure employment, nobody will treat such appointments as jobs for the boys and go after them when governments change.

Millions of people voted for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to assume the reins of government and we plead with President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to get the party hierarchy to restrain those on the rampage and get them to conform with the norms of the land.