I'm ready to appear before Fast Track Court - JJ

Former President, Jerry Rawlings has expressed his preparedness to appear before the Fast Track Court trying some members of his government for allegedly committing various offences whilst in office.

“As the President of that time, I’m not gonna run away from my responsibilities,” Rawlings told a section of the Ghanaian media last week when he visited the Fast Track Court to acquaint himself with the operations of the court.

Typical of him the former President attacked the ruling NPP government of creating an impression in the minds of the Ghanaian people that all the NDC did was defraud the nation.

“It is a propaganda,” the former leader said, adding, it was the impression they (NPP) created before they came to office and now it looks as if they would have to justify their accusations that the NDC defrauded the nation in millions of cedis. “It looks as they would have to justify their pim, pim, pim,” Rawlings who is not conversant with the Akan language ‘opipim’ meaning millions, said.

On the jailing of former deputy finance minister, Victor Selormey, Rawlings said he does not see the justification for it, saying Selormey did not commit the crime he has been jailed eight years for.

The former deputy minister has been sentenced to eight years imprisonment with hard labour for causing financial loss of 1.2 million dollars to the state. “What is going on in this country” what is the agenda of the government? What about the judiciary? Don’t they recognize what is going on? I just hope that they believe in what they’ve done because I don’t believe that the sentencing of that gentleman is correct, Rawlings told journalists in Accra on the sentence given to Mr. Selormey.

He admitted that in the history of governance in Ghana some of influence on the judiciary took place. It was not clear whether the former president himself was involved in some of these influences on the judiciary. “I don’t believe that some of us have conducted ourselves properly, as far as these cases are concerned,” Rawlings said.

According to him, the demise his party, the NDC suffered was on account of the fact that some of the tabloids and media houses have been so badly poisoned that they told many unfortunate stories about him, his wife and members of the government, adding, it did affect the outcome of the elections.

Rawlings said the ruling party has created an atmosphere of a very corrupt government and now they are pushing ahead with “the agenda of arresting and charging them, whether they end up with been sentenced or not, keep them occupied.”

Asked why he thinks Ghanaian judges would allow media reportage to influence their judgment, Rawlings said, “some day I will probably grant you an interview on these issues but this is not the appropriate time.” He however added that, “I don’t know whether some of these judges would want to actually confirm that some of those judgements actually were prepared by such and such a person, instead of they themselves.”

Rawlings expressed displeasure about comments that his government mismanaged the country. “They are just created the impression as if we just ransacked the resources of this nation, pim, pim, pim etc, creating the impression that we just didn’t do anything.”

He explained that if his government had ransacked the nation as is being said, international organizations would not have supported them all along, adding, everything that they did is on paper.