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Opinions of Saturday, 6 December 2008

Columnist: Sarpong, Justice

No Third Term For Rawlings

By. Justice Sarpong, Dallas, Texas, USA. sarpongjustice@ymail.com

My fellow countrymen, in less than one week, the electorate will cast a ballot to elect one of these men: Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo and Professor John Evans Atta Mills, as the President of Ghana for the next four years. Though we have other candidates like Paa Kwesi Nduom, of CPP, and Dr. Edward Mahama of PNC, realistically, none of the rest has a dog chance in this fight, their chances are slim to none, and Slim just walked out of the door.

We cherish our peace and will not allow ourselves to be dragged into any post election results inferno that will consume our country.

These Politicians in NDC and NPP are not angels, and we are not choosing angels either. We are choosing people who have proven expertise and knowledge to manage our economy and country with due diligence, candor and care. Fortunately we have the records of the two parties, NPP and NDC, to juxtapose on each other and choose the lesser of two evils. We are witnesses to both the best and worst of both the NDC and the NPP, and are called upon to re-sign one of them for the next four years. It is fair to say that when a government governs very well, the masses enjoy liberty, as compared to when you have a government that employs thuggery and treachery, the masses experience tyranny.

The choice is very clear in this coming election. Atta Mills and Akuffo Addo are asking us to repose our confidence and our future in one of them, and you have got to ask yourself; if you were an investor, out to look for the best investments manager for the best returns on your money, which of these two parties and gentlemen, would you choose? Would you choose the one candidate who returned your liberties to you, stripped the criminal libel law, so that you can talk freely and not be intimidated, and was part of an administration that has scored massive infrastructural and economic gains, albeit in just 8 years; or the one manager, who as vice president, sat over corporate Ghana and ditched it into bankruptcy? Ghanaians would agree with the old battle cry: “give us liberty or death”, hence entered the Kumepreko campaigns. There has never been any human history where the people developed fully their potentials in servitude and bondage. Gone are the days in Ghana when people had to hush their voices, even behind closed doors, in their own bedrooms, talking about a gun totting Ghananista president, who fashioned himself after and dressed like Che Guevara, and only felt his manhood by thundering down and intimidating the populace. Talk of a schoolyard bully and control freak.

Let me take fellow Ghanaians through the memory lane. Not long ago, really about eight years ago, we had a schadenfreude in the person of Flt. Lt. Yor-Ke Gari, as president, who presided over the most brutal government in our history. This guy came to the scene owning practically nothing and inundated us with his populist message of caring for the poor in society, but as it turns out, was to flummox and fleece us. Today, he tools around our streets in a convoy of eight bullet proof cars, thusly polluting our environment with huge carbon feet, and owning more than six houses in Ghana and others around the globe, whilst still accusing others of being corrupt. Can this O' Level failure tell us the source of his income, outside his pension as an ex-president? Who foots his gas guzzling cars, observers would want to know? Of course he does not have to buy petrol; you and I are paying for this bad ass deadbeat ex-tutelage.

Even in 1993 when this Flt Lt. Yor-Ke Gari, also known as, Togbe Kosi Exterminator, had metamorphosed his despotic P\NDC military regime into a civilian government, on July 17th 1993, the following people were executed at Nsawam shooting range:

15TH BATCH 17/7/93

Mustapha Bruce; Godfred Nyavie; Atta Bruce; Moses K. Akrong; Eric Nii Adu Addo; Vincent Ayivor; Zakari Salifu; Issah Issahaka; Kwame Nkansah; Kweiper Yartey; Yaw Medagodzi; Benjamin Mireku; Samuel Akiti; Odartey Aryee; Ahmed Smide; Abu Hashiru; Kofi Koduah; and Mohammed Ali

And what were their crimes? Some of these people were armed robbers but others were just people who had committed fraud, and people, we don’t have sharia laws where a crime of fraud and stealing is punishable by death.

Many might be asking why I am not talking about NDC Presidential candidate Professor Atta Mills but Togbe Kosi Xormenator Rawlings who is not running.

The answer is simple. Rawlings owns NDC and nobody in that Party has the cojones to stand up to him. This is a man for whom the language of temperance is foreign. He kick-boxed and beat his former Vice President to a pulp; a man that was old enough to be the father he didn't have.

Even Atta Mills couldn't stand up to him when he stood on a podium at Cape Coast, and by inference, said, that even cats were cleaner than Fantis, as Atta Mills only stood beside him grinning from ear to ear without reprimanding him. So it is fair to say, Atta Mills is not going to be a match to this man when he starts pushing him around like a sick puppy.

On December 7th, let’s send a clear message to Flt Lt. Yor-Ke Gari that would horripilate him.

We should not allow this nabob living a luculent life to flummox us to vote for his surrogate, Atta Mills, that will actually be a third term presidency of this man who is going around the country with his malarkeys. You vote for Atta Mills, you can surely get Rawlings for free.

The choices are clear, a government where the people are free to express their opinion and develop their potentials, without the fear of vanishing into thin air or having human excreta used on them as an arsenal of intimidation. We cannot go back to a government that had employed such tactics to cow the masses and the press into submission.

We have a choice to make and we should make the right choice so that our country will be a nice place to return to permanently and not as citizens going to our own country as tourists.

Lastly, the foot soldiers of both NPP and NDC should realize that, in any political upheaval, it's the poor who pay the dearest price, either by losing their lives, maimed or even losing their scant resource while those they are fighting to keep in power fly their families out of the country to Europe or USA, or have their families ensconced at East Legon, McCarthy Hill, Cantonments, Airport Residential area while the Nimas, Chorkors, Ashaiman, Bukom and other working class neighborhoods around the country absorb the devastation and bears the brunt of destruction. Let’s be smart and refrain from being sacrificial lambs for the hungry lions (Politricksters) out to use us to amass wealth after we have laid down our lives for them.

This is not one of those times when citizens are called to sacrifice their lives for the common good of the masses. The politicians will call you to demonstrate on the streets even when the security services are ready to shoot you. Don't take their bait; they are in this for their own corrupt survival, use common sense to survive too. Politicians are not worth dying for. Peace!!