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The Member of Parliament for Bawku Central, Mahama Ayariga, has said that he believes the Ghana Police Service is stopping the Minority in Parliament from embarking on its demonstration against the Bank of Ghana because it fears their action will be the basis for a military coup.

The MP explained that they find it surprising that the same police who provided protection for them in past demonstrations now do not want to allow them go ahead with their intended action.

The Minority had scheduled Tuesday, September 5, 2023, but a decision by the court to rule on the Minority’s objection on Friday, September 8, has forced them to move the demonstration to Tuesday, September 12.

In a report by 3news.com, it said that Mahama Ayariga explained that their demonstration, dubbed #OccupyBOGProtest, is intended to be a peaceful exercise.

“It is just the police that are trying to engage in fear-mongering and intimidatory tactics and telling people that there is a fear that there will be a military coup and it is the demonstration that will serve as a basis for a military coup.

“That is just fear-mongering. That is intimidation tactics that they are using and the rest of us cannot allow the police to fail to perform their basic responsibility and use threats of military coup as the reason why we should allow them not to perform their basic responsibility.

“In the past, we have marched along the same route with the same police providing us with the support and the marches have been very peaceful and very successful and so you can’t tell us that today you have lost that capacity to be able to police us to march along the same routes,” he said.

The demonstration is expected to start from the frontage of Parliament House through the Osu Cemetery Traffic Light, Ministry of Finance, High Court Complex, Kinbu, Makola, Rawlings Park, Opera Square and end up at the Bank of Ghana.

The NDC MPs are embarking on the planned demonstration against the Bank of Ghana in what they say is its mismanagement and reckless mishandling of the affairs of the Bank, and which resulted in a loss of GH¢60.8 billion and a negative equity of GH¢55.1 billion in 2022, with its attendant hardships on Ghanaians.