Plot to harass and eliminate top journalists uncovered

A sinister plan by some pro-Rawlings fanatics to psychologically eliminate some key journalists and social commentators in the country has been exposed.

The plot, according to a source close to some of the fanatics, would involve journalists and media/social commentators who are very critical of the utterances and actions of the former President, Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings, and top on the list are Kweku Baako Jnr., Editor-in-Chief of The Crusading Guide and Mrs Margaret Amoakohene, Lecturer at the University of Ghana, Legon.

According to the source, the said plotters would form a syndicate that would monitor the movements of the journalists concerned and smash their vehicles while they (journalists and social commentators) are on board. In the alternative, the gang would organise thugs to attack their targets - and even some reporters in the guise of armed robbery.

As part of the plan, "open letters" and "threatening letters" would be written and deposited in the post boxes of the targeted journalists, warning them to "desist from the perpetual attacks without decorum on the person of the former President on national media networks."

The pro-NDC activists, the source hinted, reminded the "Rawlings critics" that he (Rawlings) bagged 57.6 per cent of the votes cast in the 1996 presidential election and that "he still commands a huge support of the Ghanaian electorate and we will not stand idle for you (referring to their targets) to continue to hurt our feelings by such senseless personal attacks any longer."

Readers will recall that the Editor-in-Chief of The Crusading Guide was given a similar warning through telephone when RSM Jack Bebli was exposed in a series of publications by the paper as being involved in the gold robbery incident on the Accra- Cape Coast road in 1999. Consequently, the premises of the paper was "shit bombed" by an unknown assailants.

This happened at a time when the paper had courageously exposed some Presidential bodyguards as the brains behind the 3 day incarceration of Sellasie Djentuh at the Castle Guardroom, and Dr Tony Aidoo had caused the arrest of Sedi Bansah, a Senior Reporter of The Crusading Guide in the wake of the infamous "Adayuga gun-pulling" affair.

The same bizarre treatment (shit-bombing) was meted out to the Ghanaian Chronicle and the Free Press under the NDC administration years ago.