The #FixTheCountry protestors have revealed a number of factors that they say proves government’s reluctance to attend to their concerns.

Their suspicions bother on ‘procedure, propriety and failure of government institutions” geared towards curtailing the rights of the thousands of youth on social media, who have pledged to hit the streets over socio-economic hardship, to do so.

“The consistent actions by state actors so far for me does not show that it takes its citizens as matured stakeholders in our democratic conversation.”

At the behest of the Inspector General of Police, the convenors were called to a meeting over their May 9 protest to explore ways to better-address the situation.

A convenor of the group, Oliver Baker-Vormowor says what transpired after this move on Thursday, leaves much to be desired in a democratic dispensation like Ghana's.

The IGP meet-up became a ‘Cabinet Meeting’

First off, what was supposed to be a meeting with the IGP turned out to be a meeting with Ministers according to Mr Baker.

Speaking on Newsfile, the legal practitioner narrated that members of the group who honoured the IGP’s invitation were ‘tricked’ into a meeting with sector ministers to discuss their planned demonstration.

“We were told after we submitted our letter to the police and the respondent that the Inspector-General of Police wanted to meet us and, on the way, in the police convoy to that meeting, the location was changed and we were taken somewhere else, to a fully-convened team of government ministers, incidentally one of the key persons who was missing from that meeting was the Minister for Health."

These officials included National Security Minister, Finance Minister, Defense Minister, Foreign Affairs Minister and Attorney General.

A government communique via the Information Ministry's Facebook page had indicated a fruitful dialogue with subsequent engagements in the offing.

However, the convenor says no amicable conclusion was reached.

According to him, the Ministers had revealed that an Inter-ministerial committee was going to be formed to explore measures to address their concerns and get them to drop the protest.

He told Samson Anyenini on Saturday that, the group's representatives at the meeting "told them that we weren’t expecting to have this meeting and that we were practically ambushed into the meeting and so give us time to engage with the entire audience about how they feel about this idea."

'They wanted to serve us with an injunction they had procured on our blind side'

At the end of the meeting, Oliver explained that the Accra Region Police requested another meeting with the #FixTheCountry convenors at 3 pm that same day to iron out some more details of the protest.

Within that same timeframe, the team was working around the clock to conclude a letter in response to the Police's earlier letter declining their notice to protest.

They requested to submit their response via E-mail but "they said no and that it had to be in person."

"Unknown to us, the reason they wanted to receive it in person was because they wanted to serve us with an injunction they had procured on our blind side even though they knew who they were dealing with," he added.

Later that day, the Ghana Police Service secured a restraining order from a High Court barring them from embarking on a planned protest this Sunday.

The order, granted by Justice Ruby Aryeetey, prevents the group from proceeding with the protest march on the said day “or any other date until the restriction on public gathering is lifted.”

These, coupled with the alleged cloning on one of the #FixTheCountry representatives during the meeting, smack of government's unwillingness to allow them to have their way as far as the protest is concerned.

#FixTheCountry organisers exhibited ‘bad faith’ during National Security meeting – Godfred Dame

Meanwhile, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Godfred Dame has revealed that the organisers of #FixTheCountry showed “bad faith” when they met with the National Security Ministry.

According to him, information on what transpired at the discussion with the convenors were being leaked to the public while the meeting was in session.

“And I will say so for two reasons, the bad faith was exhibited by even the leakage of what was transpiring at the meeting to the press while the Ministers were meeting, I think that it is a matter of public record, that whiles the Ministers were engaging them they were actually leaking information,” he told Samson Lardy Anyenini on the same programme.

What is #FixTheCountry?

#FixTheCountryNow has been topping twitter trends over the past week.

Social media users, largely the youth, in their posts have been highlighting some inadequacies in the management of the economy.

Despite efforts by government, including; establishment of the Nation Builders’ Corp (NABCO), National Youth Entrepreneurship and Innovation Plan (NEIP) and other commitments towards investing in the growing human capital, some Twitter users say the impact is not felt on the ground.

Dominant in the sentiments shared on Twitter are; rising youth unemployment, inefficient health systems, skyrocketing cost of rent, poor road networks among others.