He has yet to explain to the nation and the global community at large why he signed off on the summary execution, by firing squad, of the members of the I. K. Acheampong-led junta of the Supreme Military Council (SMC-I) and the F.W.K. Akuffo-led SMC-II, but he has the temerity to tell Ghanaians that anybody who takes the life of another deserves to have his/her life taken by the State (See “Rawlings: Murderers Must Be Executed” Classfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 3/16/16).
We must quickly point out here that neither Gen. Acheampong nor Gen. Akuffo and their other six military and political associates executed by the Jerry John Rawlings-led Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) had been accused of murder. What is equally significant to observe here is the fact that nearly every key operative of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), who had also served under the Rawlings-led Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) junta, the direct antecedent of the NDC and offspring of the AFRC, is protected by the Indemnity Clause appended to the current Fourth Republican Ghanaian Constitution.
And so the most natural and logical question that ought to be asked of Chairman Rawlings is why the leader of regimes hell-bent on subjecting Ghanaian citizens accused of statutorily criminal activities far short of murder would be subjected to the guillotine, in the name of social justice, probity and accountability, and yet the Chief Human Butcher apparently finds it too difficult and even downright detestable to equally call for the immediate abrogation of the Indemnity Clause, so as to ensure that all Ghanaian citizens get treated equally before the law? Mr. Rawlings is inalienably entitled to his own opinion vis-à-vis what form of punishment ought to be meted people who commit the heinous crime of murder.
What the former Ghana Airforce’s Flight-Lieutenant is not entitled to is the right to his own brand of selective justice and abject hypocrisy. I am quite certain that if the Indemnity Clause were revoked and the key operatives of the Provisional / National Democratic Congress (P/NDC) subjected to the full rigors of judicial justice, nearly every one of these self-righteous reprobates would be found to have been as criminally culpable as the 8 military politicians executed by the Rawlings-led Armed Forces Revolutionary Council. In the very recent case of 19-year-old Mr. Daniel Asiedu, the bedroom butcher of Mr. J. B. Danquah-Adu, the grandson of the immortalized and putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian Politics, Dr. Joseph (Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye-Danquah, there is clearly more to the crime than police investigators are so quickly and shockingly making it out to be.
In the wake of the brutal multiple-stabbing death of Mr. Danquah-Adu, police investigators let on to the press about the criminal suspect’s having categorically confessed to having been contracted with cash to execute the then-incumbent New Patriotic Party Member of Parliament for Akyem-Abuakwa North. Mr. Asiedu was even widely alleged by the media to have said that he had used part of his blood money to purchase a pair of shoes. What eerily, albeit significantly, continues to be left out of any recent discussion of Cousin Danquah-Adu’s murder is the threatening phone call which the slain politician is widely alleged to have received from at least one prominent Flagstaff House operative. Both police investigators and prosecutors and trial lawyers have yet to publicly confirm or deny this aspect of the case.
Then also, we are told that Mr. Asiedu has dramatically changed his story and is presently insisting that he planned and carried out Cousin Danquah-Adu’s assassination all by himself. Now the suspect needs to explain to the general public and the world at large precisely how he came by the money, part of which he allegedly claims to have used to purchase for himself a new pair of shoes. Chairman Rawlings is perfectly in order to express such deep anger and call for condign justice commensurate with the crime committed by Mr. Asiedu. Personally, though, I wouldn’t have gone to the old unconscionable and impenitent and self-righteous butcher’s home in search of sympathy the way that some of Mr. Danquah-Adu’s immediate family members are reported to have done. I wouldn’t because Chairman Rawlings’ political track-record does not square up with his call for retributive justice in the grisly murder of Mr. Danquah-Adu.
Even as I write, Chairman Rawlings’ wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, has forcibly commandeered some 800 acres of farmland belonging to my ancestral Nsawam-Adoagyiri Royal Stool. Fundamentally speaking, I don’t see any difference between such raw act of depravity and Mr. Asiedu’s barbarous slaying of Mr. Danquah-Adu in the sacred sanctum of his own home.
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