VOA: Ex-President Accuses Ruling Party Over King’s Murder

A former Ghanaian president has come under intense criticism after accusing the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) of masterminding the execution of the overlord King of the people of Dagbon in northern Ghana. Ex-President Jerry Rawlings reportedly said the murder of the former king and over 40 of his elders was a calculated attempt by the ruling NPP to intimidate Ghanaians. The former president also accused the ruling party’s presidential candidate of failing to prosecute the alleged murderers of the king when he was the attorney general. But the ruling party has condemned the accusations as unfortunate and without merit.

Kofi Andam is the spokesman for former President Rawlings. From the capital, Accra he tells reporter Peter Clottey that the former president was expressing concerns about current developments in the country.

“I would say that there are major concerns and worries that the former president has expressed and continue to express. This is somebody who believes in allowing everybody to himself, and he is somebody who believes in truth and justice. So, anytime he feels that justice of a sort is not done to some people, he will rise up to the challenge and speak,” Andam noted.

He said the former president is not happy about how President John Kufuor’s government has handled the murder of the former overlord of Dagbon.

“He (former President Rawlings) talks about the gruesome murder of the overlord of Dagbon and over 40 of his elders as something that this government masterminded. Indeed, it was something that was planned to have included him (the former president). Don’t forget also that in 2004 just after the election another shocker visited this country through the murder and torturing and whipping of Alhaji Issah Molbila to death after his cell had been turned upside down in a military custody. These are all done to emasculate the people to cow them and to put them into submission,” he said.

Andam said there was no need for the former president to go to the proper authorities with his intelligence that allegedly implicates the ruling party’s complicity in the murder of the late king.

“The fact of the matter is that this information is available to the government itself. They know they saw people danced with the limbs of the Ya Na (the late king). They put up a commission of inquiry headed by a high profile judge and they know they have the information, but what they did was to bury it. So, whether former President Rawlings goes to them or not, they will still bury it. But because it is for political reasons they will do absolutely nothing about it. A senior police officer even had to resign as a result of this callous murder,” Andam pointed out.

He denied the former president is worried the ruling party would win this year’s general elections.

“It is very clear that they (NPP) didn’t even win the 2004 election. They used all kids of means to rig the elections. Could you believe in areas like Pru where the NPP had lost heavily, results were announced that indicated that they had won by over 10,000. But the resistance of the people resulted in the declaration of the correct results. In some areas this resistance could not build up, and so they went away with their thievery. So, the NPP even did not win the 2004 election haven visited mayhem on the people, it is very clear that they are on the verge of 2008 general election heavily. But because they have committed a lot of crimes and this government is a guilty government they would not want to go that easily. So they want to use violence and everything to want to stay in power. It is for this reason that President Rawlings is trying to advice the citizenry to wake up as our forefathers did and fight it,” he said.

Meanwhile, the former president reportedly questioned why the west and its media kept lambasting Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe while showering praises on Ghana’s President John Kufuor. Ex-President Rawlings claims the only difference between Ghana and Zimbabwe was that in Zimbabwe people are fleeing, whereas in Ghana he said people are under coercive silence with nowhere to go, adding that both Mugabe and Kufuor were using similar tactics on their peoples.