Socialist Forum defends Kwesi Pratt

The Socialist Forum has jumped to the defence of Mr Kwesi Pratt, Managing Editor of the Insight, over allegations that he caused the arrest in some of his colleagues in the early 1980s describing them a "smear campaign."

A statement signed on Saturday in Accra by Mr Alhasan Adam said six months ago, it condemned the 125,000-dollar smear campaign against Mr Pratt as a "crude smear campaign to silence criticism of the NPP and thus kill public resistance to the World Bank/IMF agenda in Ghana."

"Today, the pro-NPP media and right wing elements within the CPP have launched another smear campaign against Kwesi Pratt...."

The Socialist Forum said it would have ignored the latest smear campaign if it did not raise two questions of political principle and practice that are important in the light of the US-led invasion of Iraq.

It asked: "First, is it legitimate for democrats to seek foreign military intervention to achieve regime change? Second, does loyalty to an organisation justify complicity in anti-people conduct?"

Two witnesses who appeared before the National Reconciliation Commission and a member of the defunct Movement on National Affairs (MONAS) have said Mr Pratt reported them and their colleagues to the PNDC in the 1980s.

The Socialist Forum said confronted with the questions of legitimacy of democrats seeking military intervention and justification of anti-people conduct, some members of MONAS "plotted with an imperialist power to overthrow the PNDC by force of arms."

"Pratt alone answered 'no' and took action to warn our military at great personal cost," the Socialist Forum said.

The Socialist Forum said they "firmly support the principled position" Mr Pratt took in 1982 adding that the Iraqi situation today provides an excellent parallel.

The Socialist Forum noted that the international peace movement is strongly anti-Saddam Hussein and supportive of the democratic forces in Iraq, but it is also overwhelmingly against the US/UK invasion.

"The two positions are not contradictory. Belief in democracy must include belief in democratic methods."

The Forum said what is true in Iraq in 2003 was even more true in Ghana in 1982.

"It was possible, indeed necessary, for democrats to reject both the overthrow of the PNP and imperialist invasion.

"The invasion plot was not a democratic response to the challenge posed by the 1982 coup. Indeed, the invasion was the moral and political equivalent of the coup and perhaps worse."

The Forum said the invasion would have undermined the country's sovereignty and further weakened democracy.

It said democrats owe a higher duty to country than organisation. "Moreover, where organisations embark on such adventurist schemes then democrats have a duty to denounce and expose them. This is not treachery but patriotism."

The Forum said the left as a whole failed to analyse and respond correctly to the 31st December coup.

"We must urgently come to terms with our failures in the 1980s in order to move forward united."

Meanwhile, lawyers of Mr Pratt have written to the National Reconciliation Commission demanding that Mr Samuel Addae Amoako who told the commission that Mr Pratt led soldiers to kill him should be recalled to be cross-examined.

It said the NRC should give Mr Pratt an unedited copy of the transcript of the evidence to enable him and his lawyers to prepare for the cross-examination.

Mr Pratt vehemently denied the allegations and said he takes a "very serious exception to this grave omission on the part of the Commission" to give him the opportunity to cross-examine Mr Amoako.