Rawlings to face CHRAJ ?

The Editor of the Searchlight, Kenneth Kuranchie, has formally petitioned the Commissioner on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), urging him to investigate the conduct of the immediate past President, Jerry John Rawlings.

The petition catalogued among other things, some of the acts and utterances of the former president, which tended to portray him as a bully, and an anti-democrat.

The petition also accused the former president of abusing his office to amass wealth, the Daily Guide newspaper reports.

In the petition dated February 27 2001, Mr. Kuranchie chronicled a litany of Rawlings’s alleged human right abuses and also engagement in acts which not only directly or indirectly enabled him to acquire illegal wealth but also for breaching sections of the 1992 Constitution with impunity.

Mr. Kuranchie’s additional claim is that, it is improper for Rawlings to accept a position from the United Nations as its eminent person for the year 2001 without seeking clearance from Parliament as stipulated by Article 68 (2) of the Fourth Republican Constitution.

He also accused the former president of failing to declare his assets at the time of leaving office.

This act, he said is in gross contravention of Article 280 (1) (b) (c) of the Constitution which requires public officers, including the President to declare his assets at the time of accession or ascension of office, and at the time of leaving office.

The petition also accused the former president of having shunned the mandatory Constitutional demand that a president upon leaving office, must present “a state of the nation address” either before Parliament or on state broadcast media (radio and television nation-wide broadcast), before the final suspension of the Second Parliament of the Fourth Republic.

Failure
The failure of the former president to present a state of the nation address, which of course would have presented the true and fair view of the state of the economy, to enable his successor to come to grips with the bare facts on the economy, is a clear breach of the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana.

The petition also sought to question, the former leader’s sudden taste for luxury as he persistently campaigned against opulence and even went on record as seizing the assets of other citizens of Ghana, whom he suspected to have come by those assets and investments illegally.

The petitioner therefore was at a loss as to whether the former president has forgotten the principles that underlined both the June 4 Uprising and the December 31st Revolution and asked whether Rawlings has all of a sudden become a sybarite? (A lover of good things in life).

He questioned for example, how former president Rawlings came by a state-of-the-art Jaguar XJS Sports car on October 29 2000 valued at 48, 000 pounds sterling which converts to 480 million cedis at current market price.

According to Kuranchie, former president Rawlings did not own this car at a time he came to office in 1981, and was of the belief that since Rawlings could not acquire the car through lawful earnings, there has been greed and graft somewhere for which he wants CHRAJ to investigate.

Motorway Accident
The petitioner referred to last year’s motorway accident involving the former president and his entourage in which four of his bodyguards lost their lives, after they had been crossed by an Ashaiman-bound mini bus, adding that although the accident was regrettable, pictures that appeared on the national television and in newspapers, showed that the former president did not use the presidential motorcade and Coat of Arms on his car.

This therefore could have made his recognition difficult, Kuranchie stated in his petition.

Worst still, according to the Editor, it was discovered that the then president of the Republic of Ghana, for reasons best known to himself alone, was driving an unlicensed and unregistered vehicle with no identification tags.

After the accident, according to Mr. Kuranchie, Rawlings failed to report the accident to the police with documentations like his own driving license as well as documents covering the car. He views this behaviour as unpresidential, indecorous and an anathema to the rule of law, and therefore wants the Commission to take the matter up.

He noted further in his petition that as a Commander-in-chief of the Ghana Armed Forces, former president Rawlings used that power vested in him, to allow his eldest daughter, 22-year-old Miss Ezanetor Rawlings, who is not a soldier to toy with a military equipment (parachute) and take adventure in a dare devil stunt only days before Rawlings was due to hand over power to an elected president.

Castle Dungeon
The use of Castle, seat of government as an unauthorized prison camp and a place of torture, was also catalogued in Mr. Kuranchie’s petition. According to him, either through an act of omission, the former president allowed the Castle to be used as a detention camp. This acquiescence by the former president whether by accident or design enabled the office of the presidency to be employed in acts which were likely to bring contempt, ridicule and opprobrium on himself as President of Ghana, and on the office of the presidency as well.

Finally, the petition accused ex-president Rawlings of keeping a stony silence on media publications suggesting that he owns chalet on the Volta Lake at Akwamufie in the Eastern Region estimated to cost billions of cedis whilst he claims he does not own a single dollar in a foreign bank account neither does he have a place to lay his head.

These claims according to Kuranchie by the former president are so intriguing that they cannot be allowed to go without full-scale investigations into them to establish their veracity or otherwise.

He therefore urged CHRAJ to go straight into action on his allegations against the former president.

The Daily Guide has however reported that the Commission has already written to inform former president Rawlings about the petition and also to seek his response to the issues raised against him.