Opinions of Saturday, 9 July 2016

Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame

Don’t censor the media; Punish the terror-mongers!

Call it a Conspiracy of the Leftists, and you would not be wide off the mark. I am talking about the two political savages who are alleged to have threatened to liquidate the members of the Supreme Court the other day, should the latter render any decisions these two troglodytes deemed to be hostile towards the agenda of the so-called Independent Electoral Commission (EC). Such inimical decision, it goes without saying, is obviously one that levels the electoral playing field between the two major political parties, namely, the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).

We also need to quickly point out that like the National Democratic Congress, nearly every one of the smaller parties are left-leaning and Nkrumaist in orientation. Likewise, nearly each and every one of these splinter parties are NDC surrogates, most of which are also known to be on the payroll of the Mahama-led government. And so it was none the least bit surprising to me that one of the two terror-mongering men – some have called them “gentlemen,” though I really don’t see anything remarkably gentle about their threat to execute members of the Apex Court whose decisions do not gibe with their own – namely, Mr. Alistair Tairo Nelson and Mr. Godwin Ako Gunn, has been linked to the Nduom-founded and owned Progressive People’s Party (PPP).

The executive operatives of the PPP have since issued a statement vehemently dissociating either man from any affiliation with this rump-Convention People’s Party-breakaway group. In this column, though, I am far less concerned about the anti-social and downright criminal activities of any specific political parties than the sort of radical and revolutionary mindset which produced these two would-be “Supreme Butchers.” In other words, Messrs. Nelson and Gunn are far more likely to have been produced by such left-leaning political parties as the National Democratic Congress, the rump-Convention People’s Party, the Ghana Freedom Party, the Great Consolidated Popular Party and the People’s National Convention, among a plethora of others, than by the center-right New Patriotic Party, so described, which has recently been embroiled in a bitter struggle with the Charlotte Osei-led so-called Independent Electoral Commission in order to ensure that the credibility of the 2016 general election would not be flagrantly and impudently compromised.

It is for the foregoing reasons that the threat issued by Messrs. Alistair Nelson and Godwin Gunn, or either one of them, on the Accra-based Montie FM Radio ought to be envisaged beyond the putatively benign context of an isolated incident. To be certain, such murderous mindset strikingly reflects the mainstream of the ideological temperament of the Rawlings-minted ruling National Democratic Congress and the overwhelming bulk of the NDC-sponsored splinter political parties listed above. Needless to say, like Messrs. Nelson and Gunn, President John Dramani Mahama has staunchly stood behind his party’s surrogates at the Electoral Commission which is spearheaded by Chairperson Charlotte Osei, even as the EC flagrantly and criminally defied the constitutional authority and decisions of the Supreme Court of Ghana.

When he has not condoned the systematic and strategic scoffing of the Apex Court by the Electoral Commission, President Mahama has smugly connived with famed investigative journalist cum lawyer Mr. Anas Aremeyaw Anas, and the latter’s Tiger-Eye PI team, to literally stalk and publicly expose some members of the judiciary to ridicule, even while jealously protecting cabinet appointees and presidential staffers found to be flagrantly and criminally in breach of the law. This perennial and systematic campaign of threats and downright persecution of the judiciary dates back to June 30, 1982, actually a little before the latter date, when the founding-father of the National Democratic Congress, Chairman Jerry John Rawlings and his tribesman and National Security Advisor of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) junta, Capt. (Rd.) Kojo Tsikata, ordered the abduction and summary execution of the three Akan-descended Accra High Court judges, namely, Justices Cecilia Koranteng-Addow, Kwadwo Agyei Agyepong and Fred Poku Sarkodie.

Since then, the Ghanaian judiciary has come under a relentless wave of siege, particularly when the operatives of the National Democratic Congress have wielded the reins of governance. That Messrs. Nelson and Gunn issued their threat to summarily liquidate the members of the Wood Supreme Court on the 34th anniversary commemoration of the brutal assassination of the Accra High Court judges is no sheer coincidence or happenstance. But that President Mahama has kept a deafening silence in the wake of the issuance of such threat, makes matters all the more worrisome.

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