Did God Create Rawlings?

“NDC has disowned me, Rawlings cries”; [General News of Monday, 4 April 201; Source: citifmonline]

By Otchere Darko

The twentieth century was marked by the emergence of political leaders who were once seen by their people or by other nations as good, or as “saviours” until the citizens or the nations that hailed them, later saw them otherwise. These leaders include Adolf Hitler of Germany who tried to turn his country into the greatest nation and ruler of the human race, and got many of his fellow German citizens to believe that, until his utopian imperialist “Nazi dream” turned the whole world against him and his country; Idi Amin of Uganda who was worshipped by Ugandans, after he had overthrown a constitutional dictator of his country and ruled Uganda in his place, until he became the monster no Ugandan and no country wanted; Saddam Hussein of Iraq who was propped up, armed, and used by Western leaders, until he turned into a monster and worked against the interests of the West that created him; Charles Taylor of Liberia who took up arms against the subversive, autocratic and brutish Samuel Doe of the same country, and who through such act of bravery endeared himself to his fellow Liberians, leaders of the countries bordering Liberia, and leaders of Western countries, until he, Charles Taylor, became more dangerous than the tyrant he overthrew and replaced; Muammar Gaddafi whose envy and hatred of aristocrats forced him to overthrow and dismantle the Libyan Monarchy and bourgeois, and through his revolution endeared himself to ordinary Libyans who gave him their unqualified support, until quite recently when they realised they must demonstrate against and even face him in armed rebellion, in a war that is still on-going; Osama bin Laden of Al Qaeda who, like Saddam Hussein, was propped up and used by Western leaders to serve their interests in the Middle East, until this onetime Saudi-royalist “friend of the West” turned against them and masterminded what has become known as “9-11” and many other atrocities against Western interests.

All these leaders who could, or can safely be described as the political versions of Frankenstein’s monster are seen , through hindsight, as “mistaken creations” of the people and nations that made them what they became, or have become. And when it comes to “hindsight”, a Ghanaian legend has it that the much acclaimed and powerful Seventeenth Century Ghanaian spiritualist, Okomfo Anokye, failed to find the remedy for “had I known” of hindsight, which comes too late, and only after the consequential pain from something has already occurred. While there will always be “hindsight blues”, having and using “foresight” help people to limit the occurrence and gravity of those regrettable self-created calamities that impact negatively on their creators, like the monster created by Frankenstein. If leaders, citizens, voters and other people consider the future, together with the present, before taking political decisions or actions, they may be able to avoid regretting subsequently. In short, we create the Frankenstein’s [political] monsters among us...... political monsters from former Saddam Hussein of Iraq to current Muammar Gaddafi of Libya; from former Mobutu Sese Seko of DR Congo to current Laurent Gbagbo of Cote d’Avoire; and from former Charles Taylor of Liberia to current Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. And we become our own enemies when, as a result of our failure to anticipate “hindsight blues”, we act without the “wisdom of foresight” and end up creating political leaders and activists who create problems for us who made them what they are.

This is how I see Ghanaians, in relation to the Rawlingses, “our darling couple” that some of us have today turned round to hate so much. *Every time some NDC members start to bash out at either of the Rawlingses; every time some Ghanaians complain about the entrenched constitutional provisions called the “Indemnity Clauses” that violate the rule of law and human rights in Ghana; every time some Ghanaians and some NDC members complain about the alleged plans and preparations of the first former First Lady of our Fourth Republic to exercise her rights under the 1992 Constitution to contest for the position of the highest office in Ghana in 2012; every time we, Ghanaians, try to “silence” Flight Lieutenant Rawlings or his wife, Nana Agyemang Konadu, from speaking their minds, I keep wondering whether we, Ghanaians, can pause for a brief moment and ask ourselves the question: “Who created the Rawlings who emerged after June 4th 1979, and who before that date was facing “death by court-martial”, but who after that date became Ghana’s “Junior Jesus” that got worshipped as a “little god”? Did Rawlings “create” himself? And did God “create” the two Rawlingses, after their “second coming” of 31st December 1981? Was it not we, the same Ghanaians who now complain, and most especially those who are now in NDC, who made Rawlings what he is today? Why then must we turn round and “fume with anger” when the Rawlingses we created turn on us? From the Boakye Gyans who released him from his prison cell and gave him the “licence to live” in 1979, until he turned on them and became their “enemy”; to those of us on the streets of Ghana who in 1979 and 1980s jumped onto the streets of Ghana to support him and even compared him to Jesus Christ, calling him “Junior Jesus” until he turned into the “devil we detest” and forced some of us today to regard him as “Junior Judas”, rather than “Junior Jesus”; all Ghanaians individually and severally “created” the two Rawlings that some of us today seem to hate beyond comprehension.

Ghanaians, especially the NDC, must therefore stop disowning and disrespecting the former First Couple who, instead of retiring from active politics with dignity, have continued to serve in the roles for which we “created” them, trooping from Greater-Accra Region in the South to Upper-East and West in the far North of Ghana; and from Western Region along Ghana’s Western borders to the Volta Region along Ghana’s Eastern borders, preaching to us about “public accountability”, “people’s democratic rights”, “people’s power”, “people’s justice”, etc, just as we helped them to do, after June 4th 1979 and 31st December 1981. *So, instead of disowning and insulting them, Ghanaians must rather allow former President Rawlings to continue demanding that members of the Kufuor administration should be investigated and prosecuted for the abuses they “allegedly committed” in office...... even though he, Rawlings, has used the Indemnity Clauses to disallow himself to be investigated; and has, also, failed to give the names of those friends of his who sponsored the education of his children in expensive foreign universities; just as he and his wife have failed to tell Ghanaians who the real owners of the cheaply-sold Nsawam Canneries are. *We must allow Rawlings to call for fresh investigations into the murder of Ya-Na Yakubu Andani II........ even though he, Rawlings, is yet to see and suggest that there is need for a fresh investigation into the notorious “abduction and murder of the four high court judges and an army officer”, which sad events occurred during his PNDC administration, and for which the “messengers”, rather than the “authors” of the message” got arrested, prosecuted and killed. *We must allow, as I have written before, Mrs Agyemang Konadu Rawlings to exercise her democratic rights under the Fourth Republican Constitution, to seek her party’s flagbearership in the 2012 presidential contest, if she, Mrs Rawlings, wishes to do so....... even though her husband, with her connivance, did not allow ex-President Hilla Liman to exercise his democratic rights under the Third Republican Constitution and the mandate granted him in 1979 by the Ghanaian electorate, when his administration was cut short by three years by these two “31st December Evangelists” that we ourselves “created”.

What we must do, as Ghanaians, is to bury our guilt and our bloody heads in our hands in shame for acting on the spur of the “moments of our madness” on June 4th 1979 and December 31st 1981; and, thereby, for creating what today has come to look like a “Frankenstein monster” that cannot be controlled and which has to be left on its own, till it destroys itself through its own “misdeeds” and “misadventures”; or till it becomes a victim of nature’s course. Hopefully, [and only hopefully], next time it happens again, [and may God forbid it], Ghanaians will not jump onto the streets and dance when opportunistic soldiers take arms against democratically elected leaders who have not exceeded their mandates. *Above all, when and where necessary, we must do what the people of Tunisia and Egypt have done recently..... which is that, without being instructed and used by demagogues who exploit others to seek their personal ambitions, we must take to the streets when and where necessary and risk facing guns and tanks in battle to fight in unison for our political and human rights, with our ears tightly “plugged” against the deceptive chanting drums of “adze wo fi a, oye” and “all die be die” rhetoric used by unscrupulous and divisive Ghanaian politicians to divide and rule us in perpetuity.

Source: Otchere Darko; [This writer, {who is not the same as Gabby Otchere-Darko}, is a centrist, semi-liberalist, pragmatist, and an advocate for “inter-ethnic cooperation and unity”. He is an anti-corruption campaigner and a community-based development protagonist. He opposes the negative, corrupt, and domineering politics of NDC and NPP and actively campaigns for the development and strengthening of “third parties”. He is against “a two-party only” system of democracy {in Ghana}....... which, in practice, is what we have today.]