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Opinions of Friday, 16 November 2018

Columnist: Kwaku Badu

Baako Jnr is absolutely right: NDC is a progeny of a vicious coup d’état

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The seasoned journalist, Kweku BaakoJnr, could not have said it any better when he aptly reiterated on Peace FM on Wednesday 14th November 2018 that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) was born out of a violent coup d’état and funded by the Ghanaian tax payers.

Let us admit, individuals can choose to identify themselves as revolutionary enthusiasts or the ideologues of transparency, probity and accountability if they so wish.

That said, it is extremely dishonest and hypocritical when a group of people who claim to be exponents of such ethos turn round and commit the same crime they have previously punished other people for.

There is a universally recognised principle which goes: “he who comes with equity must come with clean hands.”

Obviously, the NDC loyalists would never agree with some of us for choosing to analyse the current affairs through the lenses of the past. But I am afraid we cannot make sense of the present happenings if we refused to take stock of the past events.

But whatever the case, some of us will continue to squall, censure and highlight the revoltingly risible tendencies of the so-called devotees of the 31st December 1981 revolution.

It is important to note that when the revolutionary enthusiasts (the founders of NDC) burst onto the scene, they went into conniption-fit and tempestuously tortured and murdered all sort of people, including those with more than two vehicles.

However, as I write, the revolutionary enthusiasts and their teeming supporters are hypocritically in possession of not less than two vehicles per household.

Believe it or not, back then, the vast majority of house owners were punished severely for having more than one toilet facility in their households.

But the last time I checked, the vast majority of the so-called revolutionaries have uncountable toilet facilities in their luxurious mansions.

Moreover, the founders of the NDC impertinently exhibited their communist ideals by going into war with business men and women in the country.

What is more, the founders of NDC, regrettably, tortured and murdered innocent business men and women, many of whom were bizarrely accused of legally borrowing meagre sums of money from banks to support their businesses.

Strangely, however, the so-called revolutionaries who repugnantly collapsed innocent peoples businesses now own business outlets all over the place.

Some innocent business men and women, so to speak, were abhorrently humiliated and their businesses were either seized or destroyed by the despotic NDC founders.

What was more appalling though, was that billions of cedis (in 50 cedi denominations) were seized from ordinary Ghanaians without a trace.

The NDC founders, ironically, replaced our educational system with that of a communist model, while deceitfully turned around and sent their children abroad to study in what they saw as a superior educational system.

Dearest reader, aren’t the so-called revolutionaries deceitful?

I have previously informed readers that I used to be an unsuspecting disciple of the NDC founder, Jerry John Rawlings, who succeeded in proselytising some of us with his sugar-puffed propaganda.

Of course, like many other ebullient students back then, I naively thought J.J Rawlings was a Messiah sent from the Heavens to intercede for the downtrodden, and how wrong I was. Indeed, I am among those admirers who have seen the light.

Suffice it to emphasise that I ended up ruminating over Jerry John Rawlings real intentions for usurping power and then overcame my ‘benightedness’.

It is worth noting that Rawlings bamboozled onto the scene under the pretext of redeeming Ghanaians from the perceived economic mismanagement and wanton corruption, but he couldn’t even get rid of the rampant sleazes and corruption in his NDC administration, let alone the entire nation.

The founder of NDC, J. J. Rawlings, paradoxically, goes about preaching probity and accountability, but fails to practice. For isn’t it somehow ironic that someone who bamboozled onto the scene under the pretext of eliminating the widespread sleazes and corruption would turn to a fantastically corrupt former Nigerian president Abacha for a hard cash gift?

For more news on Nigeria’s former president Abacha’s alleged gift to J.J Rawlings, see: (Nigeria’s Abacha gave me $2 million and not $5 million-Rawlings: citifmonline.com/.../nigerias-abacha-gave-me-2m-not-5m-rawlings-conf... ; ‘Abacha’s $2 million gift to Rawlings: Vitus Azeem is only after the truth’,: www.ghanaweb.com/.../Abacha-s-2m-gift-to-Rawlings-Vitus-Azeem-is-o... ; ‘Rawlings must return Abacha’s $2m gift-Nigerian journalist’: www.ghanaweb.com/.../Rawlings-must-return-Abacha-s-2m-gift-Nigeria...).

It must be mentioned that Rawlings and his conspiratorial plotters, who were later to become the founders of the National Democratic Congress, as a matter of fact, unfairly kept criticising the then president, Dr Limann’s administration for what the coup makers perceived as economic mismanagement, until Rawlings and his jailbreaking geezers decided to depose Dr Limann.

Subsequently, J. J. Rawlings and the other obstreperous jailbreakers took arms and succeeded in deposing the democratically elected government of Dr Hilla Limann on 31st December 1981.

And, Rawlings and his friends formed a government which they called the Provisional national Defence Council (PNDC) and appointed Rawlings as the chairman.

In their weird and somewhat fiendish attempt to get rid of sleazes and corruption, many Ghanaians were unjustifiably murdered or tortured mercilessly for misdemeanour or infinitesimal offences.

Regrettably, however, some market women were stripped naked in the public and whipped for either hauling their products or selling on high prices. While their male counterparts were wickedly shaved with broken bottles and whipped for offences that would not even warrant a Police caution in a civilized society.

As if that was not enough, three eminent High Court Judges and a prominent Army Officer were barbarically murdered by some mindless stooges of PNDC on 30th June 1982 for carrying out their constitutionally mandated duties.

Apparently, diligent investigations revealed that all the three Judges were sitting on review cases brought by citizens disgusted over the treatment meted out to them by the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council which the military junta formed after June 4, led by Flt. Lt. Rawlings.

It was however reported that the Judges ordered the release of persons who had been unlawfully sentenced to long terms of imprisonment during the despotic rule of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC).

The Army Officer, Major Sam Acquah, was the head of administration who signed dismissal letters for some GIHOC workers, including one of the murder suspects, Joachim Amartey Kwei, whose services were terminated for invading and destroying property at the Parliament House.

Consequently, the PNDC fatuous apologists savagely murdered the three eminent High Court Judges and the Army Officer because their judgement did not go in their favour.

The Special Investigation Board (SIB) however concluded that the abduction and murder was a fiendish plot orchestrated by, and with the connivance of the members of the Provisional National Defence Council.

As a matter of fact, Ghana’s revolution days under the jailbreaking founders of the NDC could be likened to: “in the China of “the Great Helmsman,” Kim Il Sung’s Korea, Vietnam under “Uncle Ho” , Cuba under Castro, Ethiopia under Mengistu, Angola under Neto, and Afghanistan under Najibullah”.

Even though Rawlings and his conspiratorial plotters supplanted power under the pretext of acting as a peripheral Panacea, they slyly spent a little over eleven years before lifting the ban on political parties in 1992.

Rawlings, as a matter of fact, succumbed to internal and external political pressures for him to step down and allow multi-party democracy.

Subsequently, he lifted the ban on political parties in 1992 and resigned from the military simultaneously so as to contest election.

Upon his retirement from the military, Rawlings and his jailbreaking cabals went ahead and formed a political party, which they named as the National Democratic Congress (NDC), a progeny of PNDC.

To the amazement of discerning Ghanaians, the power intoxicated founder of the NDC, J. J. Rawlings appeared as a chameleon by idiosyncratically metamorphosing into a civilian president in 1992.

Disappointingly, however, former President Rawlings memorable achievement was to send us to the membership of the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC).

Kweku Baako has indeed hit the nail on the head: the NDC was born out of coup d’états and funded with the public purse to the detriment of the poor and disadvantaged Ghanaians.

K. Badu, UK.

k.badu2011@gmail.com