Arthur K: Insensitive Rawlings must shut up!

Former Flagbearer Aspirant Dr Arthur Kennedy says former President Rawlings’ recent justification of the extra-judicial killing of some Military Officers in 1979, was “needlessly insensitive”.

Mr Rawlings recently told students in the Volta region that the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council which he led in 1979 needed to have executed Lt. Gen. Afrifa, Gen. Acheampong, Lt. Gen. Akuffo, Major Gen. E. K. Utuka, Gen Frederick William Kwasi, Rear-Admiral Amedume and two other Senior Officer in 1979 to save the country from implosion.

“We had no choice. We thought let two go. Acheampong and a certain Utuka, very corrupt Generals. They were sacrificed. It was not enough. Ladies and gentlemen, 10 days later, we had to sacrifice another six and some of the Commanders were innocent good people but it had to be done because the rage in the country was too high, too much”, the former Military leader told students in the Volta region where he spoke as the Guest of honour at the closing ceremony of the regional camp of the International Youth Fellowship at the Adidome Senior High School.

He said the purge was necessary to cleanse the country of corruption at the time.

According to him, “The ‘kalabule’ had so badly gripped the society”.

The AFRC was the government of Ghana from June 4, 1979 to September 24, 1979.

Led by young Flt. Lt. Rawlings - who had just two weeks earlier been rescued from near execution after his detention in a botched May 15, 1979 coup plot – the junta railroaded its way into power through a bloody takeover that toppled another junta, Supreme Military Council.

Condemning the justification of the killings, Dr Kennedy wrote in an article copied to XYZ News that: ‘Now, if some of those executed were “innocent good people”, why does he keep rubbing pepper into the wounds of their families by defending their extra-judicial killings?’

“Why has he never apologised for those killings?”

Dr Kennedy wondered “if today, another group of revolutionaries showed up with the same standards and attitudes as the AFRC, would Mr. Rawlings be clean enough to survive?”