Why send an innocent soldier to foreign mining company? - Kwesi Pratt asks

The managing Editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr says the major reason why mob action is increasing in the country is the ‘lack of faith in state institutions’.

“What we are discussing is a national security situation; it’s a major challenge for national cohesion, a functioning state. What we are discussing is a sliding into a banana republic…what we are talking about is impunity; the lack of faith in our security establishment. The refusal of state actors to punish crime, that’s what we are talking about…and we should focus attention on that in order to deal with the problem

…we’ve had a situation where the ECG office has been attacked and vandalised by persons who claim to have grievances against ECG. They did not go to the police, they did not go to the court, they simply attacked the ECG and burnt the office…it should be telling us something. The fundamental question in all of this is; why is it that citizen feel or have been made to feel that when they have grievances, recourse to state institutions will not address those grievances and that they would have to address those grievances themselves?” he rhetorically asked.

Kwesi Pratt, who was commenting on the lynching of Captain Maxwell Mahama, said during a panel discussion on Radio Gold’s Alhaji and Alhaji that if soldiers are not having confidence in the police to do its work, how much more civilians.

“The soldiers say they have no confidence in the police and that they should be allowed to handle a case of alleged murder; how different is that from all the other people who are refusing to go to the police? How come foreign mining companies come to operate in our country and our security services decide that detachment of our armed forces should go and protect them; protect them against whom? What is the role of the army; is the role of the army to protect us or the foreign multinational companies who are wreaking havoc in our communities? Why send an innocent fine officer to go and protect one of these foreign companies? Why? I don’t understand.

That is why I am in full sympathy with the soldiers who are saying that from now on they should not be involved in those operations. The soldiers that are saying they should not be involved in such operations are saying something that we ought to listen to,” he said.