Boakye Djan wants June 4 outlawed

The former spokesman and deputy chairman of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) has made a passionate appeal to Parliament to revise the Public Holidays Law 1989 (PNDCL 220), according to the Free Press.

In a message faxed from his London base to the paper, Major Boakye Djan stated that a revision of the law would outlaw and make unnecessary the celebration of the forthcoming and any subsequent anniversary of June 4 as a public holiday in Ghana.

Major Boakye Djan, in the message, said he still maintains as he always had, that June 4 should not be celebrated as a public holiday for purely military reasons.

First, it is not keeping with military tradition of not celebrating war or its outcome even by the victorious, out of respect for all those killed in action or who suffered on both sides. "At best we are only made to commemorate with a service or wreaths the war dead," he said.

According to the retired army major, the recurrent political celebration of June 4 as a public holiday makes difficult both the ongoing healing process within the military and the reorganization of the Ghana Armed Forces into an efficient non-political professional body.

"These are reasons compelling enough to be made to exclude June 4 as a public holiday. I therefore urge parliament, in a truly non-partisan commitment to the national interest, to move quickly to approve the bill before June 4, 2001.