Coup Plots: Why Govt Kept Quiet

National security operatives have managed to foil several potential coup plots that would have destabilised the state, since the NPP came to power two and a half years ago.

Deputy Minister of Information, Stephen Asamoah Boateng, who made this revelation at Sekondi, said the government decided not to put this information into the public domain because it did not want to create panic or tension. Besides coup plots usually border on national security but not all issues that involve the security of the state must be made public.

Speaking at a constituency youth congress of the NPP in Sekondi at the weekend, Asamoah Boateng said the recent press reports of a coup plot did not emanate from the government.

He said the wives of the officers who were picked by national security for interrogation must have leaked the information to the media.

According to Asamoah Boateng since the government did not announce the previous ones this one too would not have been made known to Ghanaians to create unnecessary tension and panic.

The deputy minister explained that national security has been monitoring the movements of the officers, who were picked for interrogation, for the past six months but it was only when the security men suspected something fishy that they were picked for interrogation.

During this period of surveillance he said the security operatives discovered that the officers kept on changing cars that they were using in their movements. He said for instance whenever one of them attended a meeting somewhere, he would return home in a car different from what he drove earlier.

The deputy minister, who also made known his intention to contest the Mfantsiman parliamentary seat in the Central Region, expressed surprise about views by a section of the public that the coup plot was a hoax because no coup plotter would be arrested for interrogation and allowed to go home.

“NPP government is a civilized government therefore whatever we do, we do it in a civilized manner,” he said and added that if it were in the NDC era, the officers would have been tortured whilst investigations were still going on.

Mr. Boateng reiterated the government’s call on the public not to panic because the government is firmly in control of the situation.

He accused the NDC of undermining the good work the government is doing which included the construction of good roads, saying because the NDC officials misappropriated the funds meant for the construction of roads, they ended up doing shoddy work on most of the roads.

He cited as an example the dual carriageway from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology junction to Kejetia in Kumasi, which is now being reconstructed only a few years after construction.

Mr. Boateng said when ex-President Rawlings came to power through a military coup he killed a number of the country’s leaders while other people disappeared.

Up to date, Mr. Rawlings has not said anything about these killings and disappearances he said, but now he keeps on hammering on women who were serially murdered during his own regime and has gone further to make unsubstantiated allegations against the present government about those murders.

He said because Rawlings and his government knew what they were doing behind the scenes, they decided to allow the Ghana Police Service to collapse but now that the present government is trying to correct things they are not comfortable with it.