What circumspection is former President Jerry John Rawlings talking about regarding Ghana’s most obnoxious scandal since she was carved as a country?
We understand his desire to be relevant. He is worried for being left out these days in matters of national importance. He wished he could have a say here and there in such issues. With his contributions hardly making sense anyway, he could as well remain in his cocoon because many are fed up with his remarks.
He appears to take issues with the media in the manner they have handled the breaking news about the unprecedented judicial scandal.
Here is a man who used to hop from one end of the country to the other pretending to be campaigning against corruption and other progress-inhibiting tendencies among his compatriots. He had earlier caused the execution of persons, the children of who are alive today – facts still in the minds of people.
Exactly what does he want us to do under the circumstances? Clap our hands over the scandal or even withhold further developments about the subject?
Corruption is a grave matter in every country. Perhaps that is why China has been extreme in its management of the aberration by executing those found guilty of it, although we are not in support of this state response to graft by public officials. When it is detected among a large number of those charged with the interpretation of the law and sentencing those found guilty of corruption and other breaches of the law as we have witnessed in the past few days, we must be devastated.
Our response should be an incessant reportage on the subject with a view to assisting in the effort to clean this important arm of government and to ensure that it is manned by men and women of integrity who fear God.
We are surprised that the former president has lost the appetite to continue with his so-called anti-graft crusade, preferring now to be selective in those he puts on the spot.
That was not the case when President John Agyekum Kufuor was in power. The occasional reference to corruption by Rawlings is anything but sincere.
Corruption, when it occurs with ample evidence, should be amplified with maximum decibel. That is one of the effective means of dealing with it.
What we gather from his rather weak admonition is that we should treat the scandal with kids’ gloves. Really?
Rawlings should have tampered gently with those he had an axe to grind with and eventually led to the gallows under the pretext of corruption.
The war against corruption should be fought with all our might, ignoring such calls for restraint by Rawlings.
Corruption is corruption, regardless of whoever is enmeshed in it.
