• They also believe that there is the need for the president to directly speak to their concerns
• Earlier, the police frustrated attempts to protest, citing COVID-19 preventive protocols
The long-term goal of our campaign on bringing national attention to major stories happening in the country is to inculcate a culture of protest in the heart and minds of the populace, insists the convenors of the #FixTheCountry protest.
Making this known in an interview, Oliver Barker-Vormavor, one of the leaders of the campaign, maintained that it should not be enough for Ghanaians to only admit that the political system has failed them; rather, they should be able to use reasonable force to command the manifestation of those demands from leadership.
“For us, one of the biggest things we want to do is to institutionalize protest culture in this country. When you put democracy in place, we expect certain state institutions will hold the key to keeping institutional excesses in check,” he said, reports citinewsroom.com.
He added that “But over time, even those have been weakened and undermined, and for the first time, we are seeing outside those institutional structures and individuals who are coming up and trying to hold those structures to account. We must institutionalize the Ghanaian sense and make protest sexy.”
Members of the #FixTheCountry campaign have largely lamented the inadequate or non-existent amenities in the country, among others like deplorable infrastructure, poor sanitary conditions, a housing deficit accompanied by exorbitant rent, general high cost of living, and high levels of unemployment.
Using social media platforms Twitter and Facebook, they have expressed outrage about the economic hardships and the levels of underdevelopment brought on the country by its leaders.
But their attempt to protest these issues have been fraught with challenges, occasioned too by the refusal by the police to grant them the green light to hit the streets in protest.
Although some government officials have expressed the state’s commitment to meet the demands of the campaigners, there are those who believe the president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, should speak to the concerns of the group, the report added.
Oliver Barker-Vormavor stressed that it will take only a true and reconciliatory approach to rebuild the faith of the many hopes of Ghanaians that have been lost in the work of its leaders.
“Systematic issues have caused lives. We need to get fellow Ghanaians to get on TV and speak on how the system has affected them, what they have lost and this is what the healthcare system has cost me. We need to go through that as a process of national healing.
“This is one of the things we think is important to move the conversation going forward”, he explained.
Oliver Barker-Vormawor is a convener of #FixTheCountry protest