No “Arrant Nonsense,” Mr. Rawlings: You Have a Criminal Record!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Less than two weeks after we observed that Dracula has an incurable and pathological penchant for human blood, a body guard of “Your Monstership” was caught with a hanky-covered pistol at – of all places – the august Manhyia Palace of the regnant Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei-Tutu II. And although digitized pictures of the horrifying interception were widely published in the national media and on the Internet, Dzelukope Jeremiah continues to vehemently deny that any assassination attempt ever occurred. And here, also, we need to remember that shortly before the mangled bodies of the assassinated three Supreme Court judges were discovered on June 30, 1982, Mr. Probity and Accountability vehemently denied in a national simulcast that the government of his so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) was privy to that ghastly and barbaric event. Of course, later high-powered investigations proved otherwise. In sum, the key to the infamous Black Maria in which the judges and the retired senior Army officer had been ferried to their gangster-style murder had actually been taken from the kitchen table of the Rawlingses.

In any case, the avowed enemy of Ghana’s fledgling Fourth-Republican electoral democracy has yet to fully explain to a national audience of Ghanaian citizens and voters exactly what the intercepted pistol was doing at the Manhyia Palace, when the Asantehene and his subjects were peacefully celebrating Akwasidae, or the annual spiritual cleansing of the Asante sub-nation. Chances are that this shameless sponsor of judicial terror has no tenable excuse or rational explanation for the preceding.

It is also rather wickedly and insolently cynical for Mr. Rawlings to be claiming singular credit for the institutionalization of democratic governance in the country. Obviously, the man cannot honestly face the unpleasant fact that it was the fearless and activist likes of Messrs. William (Paa Willie) Ofori-Atta, Kofi Annan, Albert A. Adu-Boahen and Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, current presidential candidate of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), among a legion of other selfless and sacrificial Ghanaians, of course, that induced the salutary democratic culture which we are all presently relishing.

Needless to say, if, indeed, he is the singular architect of Fourth-Republican Ghanaian democracy as he claims, then Dzelukope Jato had better explain his reason for immitigably maligning the same on the floor of our august National Assembly, or Parliament, in 1993.

The taste of the pudding, it has been said, lies in the eating. The fact is that Mr. Rawlings has a long-standing record of drawing up lists of Ghanaian citizens cannibalistically dubbed “Enemies of the Revolution,” who have found themselves shortly thereafter at the Teshie Military Range and various bloody nooks across the country. And so his vacuous attempts to debunk credible reports and evidence of his having drawn up a list of citizens deserving of summary execution, at least in his wild and colorful imagination, in the highly unlikely event of Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills being elected president in the December 28, 2008 electoral runoff, cannot be taken lightly.

We also know for a fact, through the famous SIB Report, drafted by some of Ghana’s foremost legal lights that, indeed, Messrs. Rawlings and Kojo Tsikata, the former’s longtime national security adviser and clansman, were squarely behind the anti-Akan abduction, torture and summary execution of the three Supreme Court judges and the retired senior Army officer.

Then again, what does the man whose rank mismanagement of Ghana’s economy prompted the coinage of the term “Rawlings’ Necklace” exactly mean when he talks of Prof. Atta-Mills “bringing a needed change” to the Ghanaian people?” (See “NPP Created Fake Hitlist – JJ” Ghanaweb.com 12/17/08). And if, indeed, the overriding objective of the NDC government is to equitably distribute our metaphorical national cake, then how come virtually none of his so-called “ordinary Ghanaians” own any yacht/boat houses, and neither do any of these hardworking citizens own high-walled Ridge mansions like the Rawlingses? Or is it just that once he has acquired his fleet of luxury SUVs, a kind of “Trickle-Down Theory” automatically ensures that all Ghanaians would also have acquired their own fleets of SUVs?

Well, for a “scientific” explanation, Mr. Rawlings claims that his legions of well-heeled and magnanimous friends funded his children’s expensive academic and professional programs abroad, even while the former Ghanaian strongman kept our public universities firmly shuttered for months on end. Maybe, here too, Mr. Rawlings would do us and himself a lot of good by explaining to the Ghanaian electorate precisely why he flatly refused or woefully failed to convince these same rich and generous friends to assist his so-called ordinary Ghanaians to also send their children abroad for the same qualitative academic programs that our longest-reigning dictator believed could not be readily and satisfactorily provided to his own children at home.

You see, the change that I fear the most, should Ghanaians make the suicidal mistake of voting the NDC back to power, is to have non-Ewe-speaking Ghanaians, like this writer, being rudely told at the Kotoka International Airport that the roundtrip ticket which we purchased for our flight home on Ghana Airways/Ghana International Airlines cannot be honored on our return flights. Unless, of course, one nimbly devises a subterfuge by sheepishly buying into the Volta Alliance of “Nyebroism,” as happened to this writer on a visit to Ghana in 1998. We also know exactly how Ghana Airways was deliberately and systematically bankrupted by the P/NDC government.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com. ###