The Independent

Rawlings Chastises Otumfuo for failure to reprimand media

 

"Rawlings Chastises Otumfuo for failure to reprimand media" is the banner headline on the front page of the Independent Newspaper.

According to the report on Friday June 18, President Rawlings brought his brash tongue to bear on the revered Ghanaian chieftancy Institution.

The report has it that the new Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, and his delegation of 26 paramount chiefs from the Asanteman council, who paid a courtesy call on the President at the Castle, Osu were shocked by some of his utterances.

The visit was to thank the President for his assistance to Asanteman during the period when the late Otumfuo Opoku Ware II was sick, after his death and the subsequent funeral and Otumfuo Osei Tutu's coronation.

President Rawlings is said to have assumed, at this meeting, the role of a commander berating his troops for not carrying out his wishes. According to the report, the President visible anger stemmed from the government?s inability to get its favoured candidate, Nana Akwasi Agyemang, the Kumasi Metropolitan Chief Executive to ascend the Golden Stool.

He is reported to have taken the entire Asanteman Council including Otumfuo Osei Tutu II to task for not defending Nana Akwasi Agyemang when the media was writing "nonsense about him".

The media in the run up to the selection of a successor to the Stool presented profiles of all those vying for the position of Asantehene, where Akwasi Agyemang also one of the contestants, was said to have exposed his adversities during the early stages of the revolution.

In the words of the President, Akwasi Agyemang as a royal has a rare privilege of dressing in full regalia just as other royals do. The President added that Akwasi Agyemang did not do that and rather carried on the duty of chief sanitary Inspector, an action the President said was misconstrued by the media.

The paper reports that the President also castigated Otumfuo and his paramount chiefs for not commenting on the recent row between the churches and the Ga traditional rulers during which some callers on an Accra FM station had said Gas cannot compare themselves with the Asantes.

The President whose speech was marked with references like ?your chief? ?Osei Tutu? with out recourse to the Asantehene?s title of ?Otumfuo? also showed a lot of disdain towards Asanteman, the paper reports.

GRi