Former President John Rawlings
If Chairman Jerry John Rawlings really believes that any bona fide operative of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) would use his name and/or image to design the party’s paraphernalia in the lead-up to Election 2016, then he had better check himself into one of the psychiatric centers or clinics around the country.
(See “I Have Not Said Anything About Montie FM Saga – Rawlings” MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 8/1/16).
It ought to be obvious to him by now that this is the work of those desperate National Democratic Congress (NDC) apparatchiks who have virulently accused their founding-father of shilling for Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the three-time NPP presidential candidate.
I know, of course, that there is quite a slew of grossly misguided New Patriotic Party hacks who would fain have Chairman Rawlings campaign for the party. But, of course, if these misguided souls really appreciated the spirit and principles upon which the offspring of the United Party (UP) and the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) were founded, they would not want to have anything to do with this most bloody of junta leaders of postcolonial Ghana.
Such misguided souls have also long realized that our current democratic cultural dispensation owes far more to the movers and shakers of the New Patriotic Party than any other major political organization in the country.
Needless to say, the riotous and aggressive reaction of the supporters and sympathizers of the National Democratic Congress to the conviction and prison sentencing of the Montie Three ought to inform many a critical-thinking Ghanaian citizen that left to the leaders of the NDC alone, our country would be a veritable medieval dictatorship where any members of the judiciary perceived to be against the interests of the National Democratic Congress would long have been savagely abducted from their homes and families and summarily executed, Mafia-style, as was done to the three Akan-descended Accra High Court judges some 34 years ago.
On the brouhaha surrounding the jailing of the Montie Three, it well appears that the hip-shooting, motor-mouthed former Ghana Airforce’s flight-lieutenant has finally come to the realization of that maxim which counsels that “Silence Is Golden.”
For the fast-aging Butcher-of-Sogakope recently came out to publicly denounce claims making the rounds that he had appended his signature to a circulating petition seeking to pressure President John Dramani Mahama to nullify the conviction and prison sentencing of the Montie Three gang members, namely, Messrs.
Salifu Maase (aka Mugabe), Alistair Nelson and Godwin Ako Gunn. These three would-be terrorists are widely known to be on the payroll of the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress.
Indeed, the chief rabble-rousing instigator among the group, Mr. Salifu Maase, is known to have returned from his voluntary exile, in London, with the overriding objective of helping Mr. Mahama appropriate every available means, including violence, to entrench himself at the Flagstaff House.
At least one member of the gang is reported to have remarked on air that he intended to rape Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood, as well as summarily execute her, along with Justice Sulemana Gbadegbe, two of the Kufuor-appointed members of the Supreme Court who sat on the panel that adjudicated the Ramadan-Nimako case which sought the expurgation of the names of all registered voters who had registered to vote by the use of their National Health Insurance Scheme-issued cards in the lead-up to Election 2012.
The Montie Three gangsters had predetermined that it was Justices Wood and Gbadegbe who posed the greatest danger to the Mahama Posse’s attempt to rig Election 2016 in favor of their prime benefactors.
Chairman Rawlings, perhaps finally remorseful about his decision to have Justices Cecilia Koranteng-Addow, Fred Poku-Sarkodie and Kwadwo Agyei Agyepong abducted from their homes and families, has vehemently denied ever signing onto the petition seeking to have President Mahama use executive powers granted him under Article 72 of Ghana’s Fourth-Republican Constitution to effectively nullify the prison sentences of the Montie Three.
This is quite refreshing in some ways, not the least bit of which is the salutary strengthening of the country’s fledgling democratic culture.
But, of course, Chairman Rawlings may have to squarely bear the blame for having created the present culture of abject decadence and rank disrespect which clearly appears to have informed the murderous language of the Montie Three.