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The fact that it is said, do not speak ill of the dead, does not deter me from speaking the truth about the good and bad things that the late former President Jerry John Rawlings did. People may disagree with me on some of the points, however they have a say. “Opinions are like noses, everyone has one and nobody’s is perfect”
I felt a strong dislike (dislike) towards the late President JJ Rawlings when he ordered the execution of some military heads of state and government leaders then and in the past, when he was president of the ruling military junta, Revolutionary Armed Forces. Council (AFRC). Many innocent Ghanaians were mistreated, injured, killed or simply evaporated into thin air, never to be found again until today. No one can say how those people disappeared from the face of the earth, therefore from the land of the living, except the perpetrators of those heinous crimes.
However, while some of those heinous crimes committed against Ghanaians were committed during his presidency of both the AFRC and the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), he must be held guilty. This is normal, as anyone in a leadership position, whether in government or in the workplace, is often accused and held accountable for the repeated collective and reprehensible faults of his subordinates. In the advanced world, in their workplaces and in government, some leaders resign their positions because of serious mistakes made by their subordinates. No wonder the late President Rawlings is indicted and blamed for all the murders and related crimes against innocent Ghanaians during his leadership in Ghana.
Once again, “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” said Sir John Dalberg-Acton. His obsession with the power to rule Ghana to the death, then naive and vulnerable as he was, unconsciously allowed those around him to take advantage of him to commit crimes with impunity.
With this post I do not intend to exonerate him of total guilt, but to tell both sides of Rawlings what he was like.
Later, retired military captain Kwadwo Tsikata, his special security adviser, got his hands dirty in many of the killings that took place under the Rawlings presidency and presidency. He was such a brutal and callous individual that he never forgave anyone who crossed his path. Why was the Military Police of previous governments disbanded and some of their personnel treated ruthlessly when Rawlings became the leader of Ghana? As a task for the Ghanaians, go and find out what they were doing with retired Captain Kwadwo Tsikata, a suspected coup plotter, under the chairmanship of His Excellency Hilla Limann of the National People’s Party (PNP). They mounted open and covert surveillance on him, and the rest, therefore repercussions, is for his task.
Joachim Amartey Quaye, allegedly planned the gruesome murder of the three Accra High Court justices: Judge Fred Poku Sarkodie, Judge Cecilia Koranteng-Addo and Judge Kwadwo Agyei Agyepong, and retired Major Acquah, for having been tried and declared previously guilty by Ms Cecilia Koranteng-Addo for a case involving workers in Ghana Industrial Holding Corporation (GIHOC) riots that attacked parliament in the Third Republic of Ghana. He was one of the labor leaders in the GIHOC riots.
Also, and in quotes, “In 1980, Cecilia ruled in favor of a businessman named Mr. Shackleford, who had been arrested during the 1979 revolution led by Jerry Rawlings.[3] Cecilia maintained that there was no justification for the arrest and ordered his release. Cecilia was the first judge who questioned the transitory provisions of the Revolutionary Council of the Armed Forces (AFRC) inserted in the 1979 constitution and released an AFRC convict ”
When Joachim Amartey Quaye became a member of the PNDC in 1982, he sought a pound not only of Judge Cecilia Koranteng-Addo’s meat, but also of the other judges.
In the future, my own father-in-law (by extension being married to his elder brother’s daughter), the industrial magnate Mr. Benjamin Amponsah Mensah (BA Mensah), had his factory, International Tobacco Ghana Limited (ITG) confiscated by the government of the PNDC. Although Mr. BA Mensah wrote a check to pay what he owed, including penalties, it was rejected. He wrote a second check doubling the amount he owed and was rejected. He issued a third check tripling what was charged and assessed as owed, again was rejected with the Ghana Revenue Authority explaining that “Order from Above” had ordered them not to receive anything from BA Mensah in payment of their debt, it will confiscate your factory.
The person who planned and orchestrated the seizure of the BA Mensah tobacco factory is allegedly the late Paul Victor Obeng (PV Obeng), a member of the PNDC government.
Why did Rawlings upon arriving at the newly built residence about to be inaugurated of Enoch Teye Mensah (ET Mensah), a Minister of Education and Member of Parliament from the Ningo-Prampram constituency during the PNDC regime, immediately leave? of the house and the ceremony arranged? It is alleged that he asked him where he got so much money to build that house. He knew he had stolen it from the Ghanaian taxpayers.
He was against corruption of all kinds. However, the people he trusted and appointed to government and public service positions were not honest but corrupt. They played with their naivety and vulnerability to enrich themselves illegally at the expense of the public and their flagship policy of “Transparency, Responsibility and Probity”, the cardinal axes on which their revolutions and their government revolved.
Rawlings really needed genuine, incorruptible, forward-thinking people to work with to move Ghana forward. He needed people who were ready to serve Ghana and humanity in a selfless way, with whom to work. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find many of those people. If not, you would not recognize a letter I sent you in 1993/1994. He sent me a classified reply with a reference number indicated and on a presidential letterhead.
Whether you have had time to address the issues raised or not, I discovered in Accra in February / March 2018, while on vacation, that some electric meters are mounted outside houses to stop rampant theft of electricity. I had suggested that electric meters be mounted outside houses in well-built enclosures, served by the vendor’s (supplier) service wire and from where the owner’s wire will start. Therefore, no matter how risky one builds their electrical installations in their homes, they will never be able to bill their electrical consumption to the public network. They will pay exactly how much they consume without the illegal connections being able to avoid paying for the kilowatt-hour units consumed.
There were no electrical installation inspectors / testers in Ghana to ensure that household electrical work conformed to safety standards or regulations. I suggested in my letter that Ghana needs electrical inspectors / testers to verify and certify household electrical work done by others for safety and compliance with regulations, just as it is practiced in France. Now, in Ghana today, we have that. The Ghana Energy Commission can be consulted if domestic electrical works are not checked for safety before connecting them to the supplier’s service cable.
If Rawlings was able to respond to my letter, in which he was a bit excited and insulting, then it clearly showed how he wanted to move Ghana forward, but unfortunately, he couldn’t get the right people but the corrupt ones.
From the little said, weren’t those he named the ones who committed most of the crimes that Ghanaians came under his blind side to watch? Blind side is defined as “the area behind and slightly to the side of you that you cannot see.”
Finally, did he not remorsefully acknowledge that it was one of his most respected army generals at the time who forced him to sign the execution by firing squad of the late Brigadier General Akwasi Amankwaah Afrifa?
To conclude, Rawlings was neither a saint nor the devil we knew. Those he surrounded himself with made him the devil we saw him to be.
Rockson adofo
Saturday, November 14, 2020
