Withdraw Rawlings' courtesies - NPP Youth

The recent armed attack on the house of W.O Kuntoh, one of the former body guards of ex-Flt. Lt. Jerry Rawlings, suspected to be the work of armed robbers continues to come under the scrutiny of different interest groups.

The NPP Youth Wing in a reaction to the incident has posed a number of questions, which cast doubt on the efforts of the NDC spin-doctors who have tried to exploit the incident to create an impression of instability in the country.

In a press conference at the International Press Centre yesterday, the youth wing asked to know why Jerry Rawlings rushed back from Botswana when Kuntoh was neither wounded nor under any form of siege nor even hospitalised.

The youth wing asked also why Rawlings even in the face of available evidence and the assertion by Kuntoh himself that the incident was nothing more than an act of armed robbery, insisted on labelling it as an assassination attempt?

That the incident took place on the day Kuntoh returned from his farm in Wenchi itself raised questions, according to the youth wing. They argued that for a man as security conscious as Kuntoh, who always locks his main gate to have left it ajar on the day he was attacked, begs for an explanation.

They also said why such an acclaimed marksman of Kuntoh's calibre could not kill any of the amateur men wielding primitive weapons was itself suspicious. Even more intriguing was how in the heat of things he could count the attackers to arrive at the figures he gave out to the media.

For Rawlings to return home on a flimsy excuse like coming to ostensibly calm tempers between his bodyguards and security officers on a non-existent fight points to his disregard for the importance of the assignment he was attending in Botswana. The youth wing asked whether he regarded it as a pleasure assignment.

"Does Rawlings still not have confidence in the Police even after marginalising them during his tenure?"

The youth wing asked whether there were any links between this seeming plot and the recent hints of investigations into serious allegations like the abduction and murder of the three judges and a former army officer in 1983 and the "Albert Tapes" with their allusions to the abduction and murder of a Catholic Priest in 1982.

The answers to all these questions according to them can be rolled into one word: mischief.

They said that there is enough evidence to prove that the latest act of Rawlings is part of a diabolic agenda to subvert the NPP government by undermining the confidence of the international community in it.

"Everything the former president has said since he lost power," they said, "from the infamous 'boom' speech on June 4 through his interview to the BBC in which he hinted of the possibility of something worse than a coup and the statement issued from his office in Accra point to an intent to destabilise the society."

History they said "has taught us how intoxicated the former president is with power."

The youth wing reminded Rawlings that he is completely debarred by the constitution from ever "dreaming of a return to the Castle again."

They expressed surprise at the NDC's silence on the privileges being enjoyed by him and yet deafening noises being made about the privileges at the disposal of the current president and asked, "Why would the NDC prefer a more secured ex-president to an unsecured [sitting] president?

They warned that nobody would be allowed to derail the train on its way to deliver "Positive Change" to the "long-suffering, deceived and deprived people of Ghana" and concluded that "the people of this country would in the most robust manner confront any mischief maker."