The Memoirs and Lamentations of Kwabena Amikaketo (11) Dissecting of Integrity of Truth and Other Matters (Part 3)

Kwabena Amikaketo sat in his favourite chair on his balcony, viewing the setting sun which was making way for the shadows to grow longer and soon cover his part of the world like a dark blanket.

That evening his mind was again in full lamentation mode over the response by ex-president Jerry John Rawlings to Kwamena Ahwoi’s book, Working With Rawlings.

Picking up some points in the response, he took his mind to task.

Wooing of Eminent Personalities: Rawlings actually mentioned that Prof Frimpong Boateng was one eminent personality he wooed to return to Ghana to his country. Kwabena was taken aback because Rawlings classified the professor as a thief who wanted to rule this country, when he and some many others decided to vie for the New Patriotic Party’s presidential candidacy slot in 2007 for the 2008 General Elections. Rawlings had said many times over that one thief was going, referring to Kufuor, and seventeen thieves wanted to replace him. Among these thieves were current President Nana Addo and Prof. Frimpong Boateng. Today, he claims President Nana Addo is his best friend, and another thief, Prof Frimpong Boateng, an eminent personality. Today, Rawlings says a thief is a respected person.

Ghana Roads Prior To Rawlings’ Era: Rawlings stated that before he took over the reins of governance of this country, the North was cut off from the South due to the very bad road network. Kwabena had no facts to argue on this, since he never traveled that stretch before Rawlings took over power. However, since he has been trekking to the North, Kwabena could see that almost all the good roads all over the country constructed within the nineteen years of Rawlings’ administration never last too long. More money was spent repairing old roads than constructing new ones. Far back in the mid-seventies, during Acheampong’s era, road contractor, Carl Ploetner, did a marvelous job on the Biriwa to Takoradi road, which is still good and strong to date. Stronger than any constructed during the Rawlings’ administrations.

Institution Of The Local Government Structure: Rawlings was able to mention two prominent Ghanaians, Dr Ayirebi Acquah and Madam Joyce Aryee, among what he called several others without mentioning President J.A. Kufuor (JAK), who many said sold this idea of decentralisation to the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) when he was serving as a Secretary of State. His blueprint was what was built upon to get to the implementation of policies of the assembly concept – the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies. Rawlings hatred for President Kufuor is beyond repairs. Whatever JAK had done against him could be too serious to forgive, because here is someone Rawlings never misses the chance to create an opportunity to insult. And yet when the Rawlingses were driven out of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), after Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings secured 3.1% of the polls during the NDC presidential primaries, it was to the Kufuors that they ran to. There they were accepted and given full respect as prominent visitors and treated with the highest esteem.

Yet, immediately he secured himself back into the NDC, Rawlings turned himself against Kufuor again and would find reasons, no matter how irrational, to tell the world how bad Kufuor is.

The other day during an interview on a foreign network, he told the whites that Kufuor was so wicked as not to grant him and wife special privileges when they travelled to one of the European countries. How Kufuor came into this, only he could tell, since that job was for civil servants, not the executive arm of government.

He once became very economical with the truth and told his household staff that he was being not paid his salary, openly blaming Kufuor for that. It took Presidential Secretary Kwabena Agyapong to inform Ghanaians that Rawlings was not paid through Castle, but through the Accountant-General and that after his checks, Rawlings had been paid fully and regularly, and there were no arrears outstanding.

Kwabena took note of one of Rawlings’ tantrums when, in his interview with Kweku Sakyi Addo recently, he unnecessarily brought in Kufuor’s name and accused him of advising women to give birth, while he, Rawlings, was asking them to practice family planning. With all his posing off as one who knows more than any Ghanaian, Rawlings has never been aware that the actual problem with the world is not over-population, but about poor distribution of goods and services? Standing shoulder to shoulder, the entire world population of 7.8 billion people can fit into an area of 1,300 square kilometres, the same area of Los Angeles. That is 0.00025% of the total surface area of the earth, or 0.00088% of total land surface. So how can over-population be the problem?

In the first part of that interview, Rawlings stated that he to do what he did to silence opposing views, yet, in his Integrity of Truth, he says he is very tolerant of all views. He had to do what he had to do, even by killing people who oppose him.

Rawlings also justified what he called the democratisation of violence as the only means to have meaningful discussions and co-operation; that is his definition of democracy. He added that he believed it was some uniformed soldier, and not Amartey Kwei, who gave orders for the three judges and retired major to be killed, since Kwei was not a military officer. So, as a man who claims truth and justice as his virtues, when he knew all along that his colleague could not have given such orders, what prevented him from investigating further? Yet, he has been calling for investigations into the killing of the Ya-Na, but always gets agitated when the sad events of June 30, 1982 are raised. So what at all is haunting Rawlings?

Rawlings laments about attempts on his life, but never cares about other people’s lives. General A.A. Afrifa and other innocent people were killed on his orders to save the lives of hundred guilty ones. This is justice to Rawlings.

Kwabena Amikaketo jolted himself out from the tangent he had taken. He was not to contemplate on what took place during the Asaase Radio interview, so he moved back on track to try to make sense of the contradictory statements in Rawlings’ response to Walking with Rawlings.

The Full Assembly Concept: Originally, the local governance concept was to expand from the metropolitan/municipal/district assembly concept into regional assemblies, and then into a national assembly, where individuals will nominate themselves for elections. Rawlings was once heard proclaiming that after that he would gladly become redundant. And he did not want that to happen, so was that why the concept was curtailed at its basic level?

Who Is Rawlings? Kwabena Amikaketo questioned his mind, who is Rawlings?

Here is someone who demonised those who overthrew civil administrations and killed them, but he went ahead to overthrow one and canonised himself; someone who indoctrinated the minds of people that the wealthy are the only corrupt ones in society, but used all means at his disposal to become very wealthy beyond compare.

Here is someone who did not understand why some people should drink unclean water while others used pure clean water to flush their toilets, yet not only does he use clean treated water to flush his toilet, he was never able to resolve the good drinking water problem for the poor before he left office; someone who claimed the people in the North had no good medical facility, and yet, all he could for the North was to bring down a single sick person on a helicopter for treatment in the South. He could never improve on health care of the people, and so had to go abroad to be treated whenever he felt ill, and sometimes did so under false names.

He wanted all to understand that he despised corruption, and killed those perceived to be corrupt, but his deeds exposed him as a corrupt person. Could he account for all he had acquired from the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) to PNDC to NDC? What about the Abacha millions? What about the more than four acres of land he acquired in Ridge at the cost of just twenty trips from Accra to Kumasi, or just a mere GH¢900 or something less than $156, meanwhile, the poor he came to fight for and redeem from poverty had to struggle to get GH¢980 for two years rent advance at GH¢40 a month for a single room apartment with no tap and place of convenience.

And here is someone who gate-crashed into our body politics trumpeting socialism from the rooftops, but turned out to be a radical capitalist self-reformist.

With a lot more of “Here is someones” on his mind, Kwabena Amikaketo decided it was time to retire to bed and make it another day, for with Rawlings, one hardly knows when to end. He agreed with his soul that Rawlings should never publish any book, and he should not have responded to Kwamena Ahwoi.

Hon Daniel Dugan

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Chronicle’s editorial stance

 

 

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