Rawlings delayed national reconciliation

Ghana’s delay in starting the national reconciliation process has been blamed on the disinterest of former president Jerry Rawlings and his administration in establishing the body that would facilitate the process.

According to the Executive Secretary of the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC), Dr. Ken Attafuah, the unwillingness of Rawlings and his administration to pursue the goal of national reconciliation despite the former president’s apologies on “two occasions during his second term in office under constitutional governance’ made it impossible to set up the NRC.

Speaking at a one-day seminar in Accra for the Ghana Police Service on the National Reconciliation: Understanding the Process”, Dr. Attafuah said the New Patriotic Party (NPP) viewed the apology as hardly adequate in reconciling the nation and promised a National Reconciliation Commission “to heal the festering sores within our body” and promote national reconciliation, if it won the last elections.

“The establishment of the NRC, which was in fulfillment of that pledge, also shows that the process of reconciliation delayed because of the administration in power”, he was quoted by the National Concord, a private newspaper, as saying.

“It is clear that had the NPP come into power sooner than 2001, the National Reconciliation Commission would probably have been established sooner, and it would have been seen as a part of the transitional process to democratization”.

“Truth and Reconciliation Commissions are generally speaking, part and parcel of transitional arrangements for return to democratic constitutional rule. Ghana’s National Reconciliation Commission came into being eight years after the nation’s return to constitutional rule. This runs against the grain of virtually all truth and reconciliation commissions, which generally emerged at the transitional phase of democratization”, Attafuah added.

He stressed that the specific approach adopted for work of a given commission would depend on the goals of that commission, and that Ghana’s NRC would seek to attain all the goals set out in its enabling statute which is founded on the experiences of other countries such as Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Nigeria and South Africa.

Attafuah, who is also an official of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) also defended the need for the commission reconcile the nation and cited numerous cases of human abuses under previous governments and regimes to buttress his point.