B.A. Mensah says forget reconciliation

The debate on reconciliation gathers momentum in an out of Parliament. While the Minority demands an apology from the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, and the Majority stick to its guns, other citizens suggest the calling off of all reconciliation efforts, saying there is nothing to reconcile writes The Weekend Statesman.

One such person, according to the paper, is B.A. Mensah, whose company International Tobacco Ghana Limited (ITG), was seized by the PNDC in 1989. He says there is no need to go over what has been done already after the overthrow of the 1st and 2nd Republics.

He argues: “If we were to follow the biblical exhortation, “Do unto other as you would have done to you,” then we would be forced likewise to put Rawlings and co “before a firing squad without trial. That is what they did to others.”

The Minority’s call for extending the period of enquiry to Ghana’s independence he says, is “nonsensical and simply delay tactics. Those who should have been reconciled have all died or been killed by Rawlings’ men. What remains to be done is to proceed with criminal prosecution - without delay.”

B.A. Mensah gives four reasons why it is only military regimes that need to account; two of them are: “Firstly, we did not vote them into power, they took power by force and without mandate. Secondly, they perpetuated the worst crimes, atrocities, cruelties and murder that our society has experienced in its forty-year history.