Rawlings Must Be Tried - Adae Amoakoh

As the Reconciliation Bill is designed to create path for the meaningful Ghanaian citizens who who fled into exile to come home and contribute their quota toward the national development, onetime National Organiser of the People's National Party (PNP), Mr. Samuel Adae-Amoakoh has called on the government to put up mechanisms which could help try the treasonable offenders.

Adae Amoakoh said that the ex-President Jerry Rawlings has committed high treason and he should be arrested immediately and tried for overthrowing the constitutional regime of the late ex-President Hilla Limann, adding that he should be judged by his own laid down law against the eight officers he executed in 1979.

The former exile revealed this at a press conference held in Accra this week.

He noted that in the past 20 years of Rawlings' regime lives and the mode of living have needlessly been destroyed, adding that the destroyers ought to pay to serve as deterrent to those who may be harbouring the inclination to engage in similar adventures.

Narrating his own story, he said on December 31, 1981 a band of soldiers led by Lance Corporal Samuel Amedeka, shot and seriously wounded him in his house.

He said the state of Ghana has the right to know the motive of all the atrocities committed by ex-President Jerry Rawlings before the reconciliation can work.

He, therefore, advised the government and President J. A Kufuor to be wary of the many minefields associated with power so that the nation will not fall into the pit of disorder and arbitrary rule, where state resources are plundered, as witnessed in the last 20 years.

"I trust the New Patriotic Party (NPP) regime, with the political and statesmanlike structure of the people around President Kufuor, will not fail the nation," he contended.

He expressed appreciation and satisfaction over the NPP administration for dragging some of the ex-ministers who had caused financial loss to the state to the courts.