Preamble: On June 17, 1972, a 24 year old Night Watchman, Frank Mills caught some employees of the Committee to Re-Elect President Nixon inside the Watergate Complex Offices of the Democratic Party. The Police were called in and the culprits were arrested at about 2.30am. They had gone there to plant bugs in the offices.
In August, 1972, President Nixon said no one in his administration as presently employed was involved in a cover-up. On 30th April, 1973, Chief of Staff, H.R.Haldeman, Domestic Affairs Assistant John Ehlichman, Attorney General Richard Kleindiest and Presidential Counsel, John Dean resigned. Revelations indict President Nixon: John Dean, who had become Born Again, revealed that the President, Richard Milhous Nixon was personally involved in attempts to cover up and that money had been paid to arrested staff to keep them silent. On March 23, 1973, James W. McCord told the U.S. District Judge, John Sirica that he was being pressurized by officials from the White House to destroy evidence. Another Aide, Alexander Butterfield revealed in July 1973 that hidden microscope had been installed in the Oval Office of the White House since April 1971 and that the President had recorded most conversations.
A special Prosecutor, Archibald Cox was appointed to investigate the Watergate scandal. He asked for certain tapes from the Presidency. He specifically asked for the tape of June 22, 1972. This was essential in determining whether or not the President overtly or covertly attempted to thwart investigative process. The President relied on his Executive Privilege and offered to make a transcription of the tapes available to the office of the Special Prosecutor. This, Cox objected to and insisted on the tapes.
The Saturday Night Massacre: When Cox did not shift his position, the President ordered the Attorney General, Elliot Richardson to fire him but he refused and instead resigned. He next asked the Deputy Attorney General, William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox but he too refused and resigned. The hatchet job was done by the Solicitor General, Robert Bork. That was on October 20, 1973 and became known as “The Saturday Night Massacre”.
Impeachment proceedings were initiated by the House Judicial Committee chaired by Peter Rodino. A new Special Prosecutor, Leon Jaworski was appointed by the Justice Department. On 24th July, 1974, the US Supreme Court over-ruled Nixon’s Executive Privilege immunity and ordered that the tapes be surrendered. When they were eventually turned in, it was discovered that the tape of 22 June, 1972 which was very essential to determinining the culpability or otherwise of the President had 18?2 minutes of the conversations wiped clean. The White House explanation was that the President’s Personal Secretary, Rosemary Woods had accidentally wiped that section while making the transcription. Meanwhile, the Senate Select Committee on President’s Campaign Activities, chaired by Senator Sam Ervin had been constituted and had begun televised hearings on May 17, 1973. Articles of Impeachment: At the end of its proceedings, the House Judicial Committee brought 2 Articles of Impeachment against President Nixon. (i) Obstruction of Justice; (ii) Abuse of Office. 6 members of the Republican Party joined their 21 Democratic Colleagues on the Committee to bring about the Impeachment charges.
The trial was to begin in the Senate, but before it could commence, the President threw in the towel and Gerald Ford became the first ‘unelected’ President in U.S history having been appointed Vice President by Nixon after Spiro Agnew had been forced to relinquish the VP position on account of tax evasion.
The Nigerian Situation: In Nigeria, the House of Representatives initiated impeachment proceedings against the then President Chief Matthew Aremu Okikiade Olusegun Obasanjo. The motion was moved by a member of the opposition All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) and seconded by a member from the President’s own Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). But the move was nipped in the bud by the hierarchy of the PDP. One of the reasons given for the impeachment was that the President had given $13million to Ghana Police Service without Legislative approval.
The purpose of this write-up is to comment on the similarities between events in the US which culminated in the impeachment of President Nixon and events in Ghana involving our President. Nixon was accused of cover up and thwarting investigations into the Watergate scandal. Same thing applies to President Mills. The American one bordered on moral issues. The Ghanaian situation borders on both moral and financial recklessness by willfully giving blank cheques to acolytes of the President to defraud the state of Ghana thereby impoverishing you and I to become destitute and economic refugees in our country of birth. Can the President who prefers to wear a juju ring (pictorial evidence abounds and Nii Lante Vanderpuye, a Presidential Aide has confirmed it) and who is alleged by members of his own political party to have shared his bedroom with a male subordinate of his look Ghanaians in the eye and swear by the revered Holy Bible that he has told us the truth on all that he knows about the wayoman’s swindling of the rest of us Ghanaians apart from the President and his people? A challenge to Radio Gold: When the President returned from his ‘mango-mango’ trip to the United States, he told us in clear unmistakable terms on Radio Gold that he first heard about the scandal when he was in God’s own country (the US) and he directed both the Attorney General’s Department and the Ministry of Finance to furnish him with details when he arrived in Ghana.
He then threw all decency and Godliness in him to the dustbin when he made his infamous and ungodly speech by stating that the wayo man was legally entitled to the money which he, the President (unless he had come from the gates of hell) knows deep down in his heart and mind that it was fraudulently and given out by criminally minded person. Let radio gold play back the tape for discerning Ghanaians to make up their minds.
Who is to Blame? The NPP government asked Waterville to commence work on the three stadia pending when the final agreement would be signed. The Government, along the way, realized that Waterville had negated in almost all aspect of the agreement and that if it did not act fast enough, it faced the risk of having its bid to host the African Cup of Nations withdrawn by CAF. And so, Government brought the entire procedure to an end, and paid Waterville for work done. Is there anything wrong with that?
The Volta University Project: The President went and cut the sod, amidst fanfare and ordered work to commence at the site for the so-called Volta University whilst the LI for the University had not even been laid before Parliament. The University was expected to commence academic work in September 2011. But at the time of writing, nothing concrete has been done about it.
STX Project: The President and the NDC rode roughshod over genuine concerns expressed by patriotic members of the New Patriotic Party Members of Parliament and passed the STX Bill under a Certificate of Emergency/Urgency. With criminal minds, they paid the Korean partners various sums of moneys. Today, the project is yet to commence, and the President and his political atavists at the Castle are patting themselves on the shoulders for criminally and fraudulently selling their conscience and our collective destiny to the highest bidder. Did Woyome have a contract with Government? The wayoman himself has stated in unmistakable terms that he did not have any contract with Government. Simple! The matter should have been allowed to rest there. But our criminally minded President, spurred on by his rudderless cheerleaders instructed some conscienceless Ghanaians to “necodemously” enter into negotiations with Woyome to steal our money. I have been reliably informed that the plan was FIRST hatched by those holding the President hostage before being sold to the President, just as the serpent used guile and deceit to seduce Eve at the Garden of Eden. The search for a willing tool with a criminal mind like theirs started. The searchlight fell on Alfred Agbesi Woyome, who could not resist the juicy offer.
Is the President criminally minded? In an interactive session with Senior Editors of newspapers at the Castle early this year, the President said that he will not be irresponsible and criminally minded to have ordered payment of such a gargantuan amount of money to a fraudster. If the President and his men are not criminally minded, why did they not heed the advice and warnings issued by Mr. Kwame Tetteh, Chief Legal Counsel to Waterville not to entertain any claim from Woyome? But because the NDC Government is wicked and criminally inclined, it went ahead and entered into secret negotiations to pay the money. Infact, the money was fraudulently arranged by criminal minded people to a fraudster who is also of criminal mind. Wickedness at its worst, one might say.
Commonsense is not common, after all: Before fraudulently paying the gargantuan money, did commonsense not tell them to enquire from the NPP Government what it knew about the transaction? But because the President who does not have any trace of Godliness in him and his Government are irresponsible and criminally minded, they went ahead and paid out the money. They then turned round to accuse the NPP of willfully causing financial loss to the country.
The scenario is similar to entering someone’s house or compound. You meet someone at the gate but did not greet him/her. You did not meet/find the person you are looking for and on your way out, you ask the person you had earlier met at the gate but did not greet the whereabouts of the person you are looking for. What do you think the person will do? He will look at you, eyeball to eyeball and tell you to go to hell for all he cares. And this exactly what the NPP did. Judgement was fraudulently obtained: It has come out that a letter was purportedly drafted and written by NDC gurus after coercing some top officials of the Attorney Generals Department to be part of the syndicate. The letter was backdated to an earlier date. With that as the trump card, the NDC Gurus prompted or foisted Woyome to go to Betty Mould Iddrissu, who had already been briefed to play it soft to make his devilish demands. This, Betty acquiesced since she was merely acting a script which had been prepared for her. Push went to shove: One thing led to another for push went to shove and before one could say “stop it, you there’ President Mills and his nebulous NDC had put a dagger right into the heart of the nation and Ghana was left in a state of comatose. Then, you and I fell flat on our faces. And what a great fall it was! EOCO Comedy of Errors: The theatre of the absurd was enacted right before our very own eyes by EOCO. The report reveals a nasty situation where the sinking government of our Juju President is suffocating and desperately attempting to cling on to power. It depicts a barbaric situation where Mills and members of his nefarious contraption are ‘fleecing’ Ghanaians of the very air we breathe but they are warning us not to complain.
Flaws in the Interim Report: EOCO comes out with what it calls an interim report. Based on that doctored report, Mills sent his Gestapo to arrest Woyome and others, but leave out Principal Characters like Former Attorney General and Former Minister of Education, Betty Mould Iddrissu, Minister of Finance Kwabena Dufuor, Deputy Attorney General and MP for Cape Coast, Barton Oduro and Deputy Chief of Staff, Alex Segbefia. The arrest of Woyome was effected in a Rambo style to deceive Ghanaians into believing that the Government of our juju President is out to stamp out corruption. But all that was a ruse. Woyome was given a VIP treatment and I am reliable informed by some insiders of the Nefarious Contraption that he had many ‘ecstatic ... Sessions’ with his female friends in the night during his supposed period of incarceration. I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the information but if the hippo comes from the waters to tell you the crocodile is dead, who am I to disbelief it. Mistake Number One: The Executive Director of EOCO told Ghanaians that the President on two occasions attempted to stop payment. Was the directive verbal or written? We would like to know. At what point did the President get to know of the scandal and when exactly did he issue those two directives? Were the cheques prepared and signed before those directives came? If they were, let those cheques be made public. If he gave directives and they were not obeyed, then they were not directives but attempts.
And Mills our Juju President is an Executive President, not a Ceremonial one! A king must be seen to be ruling, not reigning! For a man who told Ghanaians that there is only one President in the country and the one who put the country’s Armed Forces on Red Alert over an innocuous remark made by his political opponents, one would have expected him to act with precision. But not this weakling of a President!
For a President who used the official letter head of the Presidency to write a personal letter without a reference number at a time when he was on nation wide tour one would have expected him to exhibit some Presidential material in him. But, no, not this President who has been prevaricating at every point in time.!
Daniel Danquah Damptey (Damptey_daniel@yahoo.com) (pomaasebretuoba@gmail.com) 0243715297
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