Reconciliation Bill signed

The NDC appealed to the President not to give assent to the National Reconciliation Bill early this week, but The Accra Daily Mail has got it on authority that the President gave his assent yesterday around midday. The die therefore is cast.

Though it is difficult to understand the NDC on this one, the privilege of appealing to the President on an issue they felt strongly about could not have been denied them and it wasn't. The prerogative to agree or not to agree with an appeal, to sign or not to sign a document into law is also the President's alone to exercise, which he has done.

It is therefore in order that the President received the NDC appeal but has gone ahead to sign the bill into law. The bill that had been appealed against went through all the necessary legal and constitutional hurdles before arriving at his desk where the buck begins and stops in matters dealing with the governance of the country.

The NDC got all it wanted in the debate, even forcing an apology out of the Attorney General and Minister of Justice on the flimsy excuse that he had insulted them in his summing up after the debate. It is not as if they were ignored in the debate, they had the chance to put across their points which they did as robustly as was allowed under the constitution and by parliament's own standing orders and other procedures.

In their twenty years of holding on to political power, they had every opportunity to reconcile the nation but scoffed at any suggestion about the need to put things right even in their own interest, for posterity was bound to judge them and others one way or the other.

Their appeal to the President therefore had no standing whatsoever, other than that they wanted, with the blessing of the National Reconciliation Bill to gloss over the Rawlings years' atrocities.

The whole issue of reconciliation got a fillip in the run up to Election 2000, which was seen by many people as the coming to an end of an era. An era that caused more national dislocation of unity and pain than any other.

At no time in Ghana's history was reconciliation an issue of national concern as the period leading to the exit of Rawlings from the seat of power. Indeed many people had expected that he would have taken the lead in the reconciliation process before he left office, but he studiously ignored everybody, preferring to rely on his catechism of "Mo su kora, na me ye no more".

Ghanaians, like citizens of other countries have had their hurts and complaints against different governments, civilian and military but by and large Ghana was not as terrorised and traumatised as during the 3 month period of the AFRC of which Rawlings was Chairman and the 10 year period of the PNDC, again, of which Rawlings was Chairman and naturally during the other coup periods in which human rights were trampled with impunity.

There are many members of the NDC in or outside of parliament who so detested the AFRC/PNDC atrocities that they consorted more with "dissidents" before they tasted the "goodness" of Rawlings later in their political careers when Rawlings' regime had stabilised itself.

At the only time in Ghana's history when citizens were put under a three-year curfew, it was the PNDC that was in power. That three-year period of curfew alone could warrant its own truth and reconciliation exercise.

The Majority in parliament has more than accommodated the Minority's views in the debates leading to the adoption of the National Reconciliation Bill. If the Minority decided to sabotage itself by walking out of parliament at a crucial moment, then the members must blame their crude attempt at filibuster.

The interest of only one man, Rawlings, for that is what the NDC is pushing, should not confuse Ghana to lose focus on the main reason for calling for a reconciliation exercise.

Those Ghanaians who pressed for a national reconciliation exercise in the first place had the so called Rawlings years in mind, because that was the only period in the country's history when government was run on a patently "them - us" policy.

For example, someone like Lawyer Mumuni, the Member from Kumbungu in the Northern Region is one of the most vociferous pro-Rawlings voices in parliament today. He had to defect from his CPP political roots to NDC at a time he was known all over the Northern Region as an avid anti-Rawlings politician.

He defected because he wanted to actualise himself and achieve his lifetime's ambition of becoming a minister. His defection must be sobering enough for him and others like him to realise that the talk of reconciliation concerns mainly the period that compelled him to abandon his Nkrumahism for Rawlingism (whatever that may be).

It is that period which is the culprit, and no other time. If someone like Lawyer Mumuni is sincere about reconciliation, he should have used his tenure as a minister in the NDC government to seek reparations for his fellow Dagombas who lost vast fortunes when Rawlings' men set the decades old Tamale Central Market alight...

The NDC appeal did not have much merit. It was the call of people who still cannot see beyond the name of Rawlings because they used him as the stepping-stone to their fame, fortune, or both!