Boakye Djan speaks out again

The Crusading Guide carries that in a contribution to the National Reconciliation Bill, to be brought before Parliamentary when it resumes sitting, Major K. Boakye Djan (rtd), the former Deputy Chairman and Spokesman of the defunct Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), after exhaustively studying the Bill, has proposed alternative ideas.

During a TV studio recording of a panel and public discussion on the proposed Bill in London on August 25, 2001, Major Boaky Djan, who went into exile 20 years ago, recalled that in February 1980 and July 1981, he held two press conferences in Accra on the AFRC and Ghana’s immediate past then, where he said he was, and will always be committed to the need to set up a Commission of some sort to go into the nation’s troubled past.

Major Boakye Djan, said the Bills name, “The National Reconciliation Act 2001’, and the circumstances of its historical application could easily be shown to be irrelevant to the unique Ghanaian condition which it is being asked to address.

He maintained that the demands on the Bill as an alien import had imposed on it an intent and scope that is too narrow and abstract, and has glaring deficiencies.

The former AFRC Spokesman underscored that National Reconciliation might be a solution for other countries with troubled past such as South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and El Savador in Latin America as well as Sierra Leone and Liberia in West Africa.

He therefore, proposed that, “an agreed peace accord should be followed by a comprehensive settlement programme, which can be seen to be fair and just to all affected parties.”

“For me, there can be no better mechanism to do this than a Peace and Settlement Commission. In this context, the wrangle over cut off periods for the proposed Commission becomes a side show,” he said.

According to Major Boaky Djan, what has happened in Ghana is nothing more or less than a simple act of war and its prosecution between factions within the political class for the state office and power left vacant by the retreating colonial power.

Boakye Djan stated unequivocally, “Its periods are self-defined. It all started in October 1954 when E.Y. Baffoe, an NLM official and a defector from CPP, was stabbed to death by Twumasi Ankrah, a CPP agent, in Kumasi.