“Dear Countrymen, finally Jerry John Rawlings has given us his answer to a question on which he’s been pussyfooting around for weeks now. He’s flatly refused to celebrate the Ghana@50 with us. Instead he’s made his houseboy Victor Smith release one of his trademark hypocritical press statements which sound more like a smuggled letter from the jailed Burmese democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi, than the brutal despot who overthrew a democratically elected govt. and ruled for 20 years.
Big deal!
As a holder of Ghanaian citizenship -- albeit one who believes his is the first class type – he has every right to decide whom he parties with. What he doesn’t have a right to do is play us for suckers by telling us bald-faced outrageous lies and expect us to believe them. In the press release Rawlings reels off a catalog of human rights abuses which is supposedly going on today and which makes the Gulags of the Soviet era look like a 5-star holiday resort compared to John Agyekum Kufour’s Ghana.
It is note-worthy that in the press release he vents his frustration on western governments for the fact that the Kufour govt. continues to be in their good graces, despite his persistent efforts to badmouth it on every useless first-class ticket junket he embarks abroad. If he were in full control of his sense -- and not consumed by an ego that is taller than his 1970’s Afro hairstyle -- Rawlings would have no difficulty understanding why no one is listening to his maniacal ranting.
Those western governments have a complete record of everything he did during 20 years in office. The State Department, for instance, have on record details of a series of mayhem which his govt. directed ET Mensah to organize against unarmed student demonstrators and others; the loss of life and limb, the morbid videotaping of the torture of detainees which he commissioned his buddy Riad Hoseifeh to do. The UK govt. also has on record numerous reports of that nature, including an incident of brutality against a young man which occurred about a couple of meters from the ex-president’s office at the Castle under his express orders.
The simple fact of life in the world of international diplomacy, which this control-freak, power-obsessed ex-president fails to grasp, is that even though these same western governments extended numerous lines of credit to his govt., it didn’t mean that they approved of his brutal rule one itsy bitsy bit. They knew that that the playing field on which he was dribbling Ghana’s politics was as even as the Asawase Red Park. They knew that as long as he maintained his private militia, the 64 Battalion, the chances of any other person ruling the country were as good as that of a snowball in hell. But they continued to fund him and got him hooked on their handouts to enable them influence political change in Ghana.
Then they dangled in his bloated face the prospect of giving him a complete makeover, so good even his erstwhile nemesis Kwesi Pratt wouldn’t recognize him. They would clam up on his putrid human rights record and make him an eminent international African statesman. There’d also be a generous retirement package; immunity from prosecution; and a factotum called Victor Smith who’d issue pretentious press releases under the by-line “From the Office of The Ex-President”. They'd let all these things happen if he allowed the electorate to choose Kufour and not spill any more innocent Ghanaian blood if Agya Attah lost the election
By then, the rags-to-riches poster boy who used to order yoke-gari on credit had developed a taste for Jaguars convertibles, Jacuzzis, deluxe speedboats, waterfront villas, armored-plated SUV’s and nationally televised 50th birthday parties. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Rawlings statement epitomizes one thing. It’s almost 8 years after he grudgingly left office, but he still thinks that he did the Rep. of Ghana a big favor by handing over to her power he stole from her in the first place in 1981. The late Malcolm X put it succinctly when he used this analogy and rhetorical question to debunk the euphoria over the granting of a few liberties to blacks: “If Jesse James robbed a bank and threw a few coins to the children of the depositors, should they jubilate and declare him to be a very generous man?”
It is good news to hear that Rawlings is not coming to the party. We’ll be spared the disgusting spectacle of watching the foam at the corner of his mouth when he rants; his boorish table manners; and the gluttony that has transformed him from a scrawny hollow-cheeked Flt. Lt. of 1979 AFRC to a waddling Sumo-like mass of mischief of today.”
Email author: ebottah@hotmail.com
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