A group calling itself Committee for Advancement of Democracy, a student pro-democracy advocacy group, has vehemently condemned the Committee for Joint Action's (CJA's) Yewuo II demonstration scheduled for January 12 in Tamale. The reasons for the demonstration, it noted, were unwarranted, saying the planned action was a heinous attempt to shift public attention from the good policies and programmes being implemented by the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) government. Speaking in an exclusive interview with DAILY GUIDE in Tamale, Mr. Callistus Agbam, the spokesperson for the group said despite the provision for freedom of demonstration in the 1992 Constitution, the tangibility and genuineness of the CJA demonstration in the region could not be established. According to him, the allegations leveled against the NPP government for which the CJA intends to embark on the demonstration could also not be substantiated, and indicated that the corruption and unaccountability they stated among the reasons for the said strike were not true. Mr. Agbam enumerated the enactment of the Procurement Act, the Internal Audit Agency Act and the. Financial Administration Act as some of the institutions put in place by the NPP administration to reduce corrupt practices in the country, adding that government could therefore not be accused of corruption and insensitivity to the plight of Ghanaians. "It is only under the NPP government's Public Accounts Committee that financial misappropriations in some ministries were made public, giving true meaning to government's zero tolerance for corruption concept," he indicated. He advised the CJA to rescind the decision to embark on the said demonstration since their reasons for the planned action were frivolous and tantamount to the destruction of public order particularly in the Northern Region. Mr. Agbam called on Northerners to condemn the demonstration especially since it is scheduled to take place at a time the region would be hosting the Ghana 2008 tournament, and called on the security agencies and the authorities concerned to consider rescheduling the said demonstration or better halt it. "The democracy that the country is witnessing under the current government should be spared to allow the citizens enjoy its full benefits." The Committee for Joint Action (CJA), in a release signed by its regional secretary Mr. Issah Issahaku Insect, announced a plan to stage a demonstration dubbed Yewuo 11 in the northern regional capital, Tamale. The intended demonstration is “to register our displeasure at the terrible policies of the NPP administration that keep the good people of this country largely impoverished," the statement contended. Earlier, the security agencies had registered their inability to provide security for the demonstrators due to some official reasons. But the group threatened to embark on the demonstration with or without security. Source: Daily Guide