Massa, Leave Mr. Kweku Baako Alone!

Opanin, I do not hold brief for Mr. Kweku Baako - who  (along with Mr. Kwesi Pratt) happens to be my hero - but it is important that certain facts are made plain.

Mr. Baako, unlike the many praise-singing regime-guard-dogs in the media, has not sold his conscience to anyone - but has rather taken a principled stand to defend Ghanaian democracy, at all costs.

His constant criticism of the former president ought to be seen in that light. He regards Flt. Lt. Rawlings as a threat to the constitutional order. Period.

Give Mr. Baako his due - the former president does have a history, does he not?

Mr. Baako takes as his reference point, the derailment of the 3rd Republic - a tragedy he believes stemmed in part from the endless media criticism of the Limman regime. He believes that that played a large part in eroding public confidence in that regime: and that the former president took advantage of it.

He is right to hold Flt. Lt. Rawlings to a different and higher standard - for, at a point in time, he presided over a regime that actually executed many senior military officers, including three former heads of state, for corruption and for coup-making.

If you recall, after he overthrew the Limman administration, Flt. Lt. Rawlings actually did say that if he failed to root out corruption, he ought to be shot: as he would have failed Ghanaians.

Mr. Baako is not on a personal vendetta against the former president. Have you ever heard him asking for Mr. Rawlings to be shot, although Flt. Lt. Rawlings did say so himself: when he wanted to gain acquiescence for his treasonable actions of 31st December 1981 and ensure that Ghanaians gave their support to his unnecessary military coup?

Do not forget that Mr. Baako has even stated publicly, that he will never be part of any attempt to physically harm the former president in any shape or form. He is not being personal - just doing all he can to protect the constitutional order from the threat he believes Mr. Rawlings does pose to it.

And he is not alone in making that assessment of the former president, Opanin, is he?

Massa, perhaps you forget that the only justification for the former president being in our public life in the first place, was supposedly because he was going to root out corruption from our public life.

He did not succeed - and in that sense does not deserve to figure prominently in any way in our national life: going by his own statement that he should be shot if he failed Ghana. He did fail in the task he set himself, in that sense, Opanin.

Well, not only do you and I know that Rawlings did not succeed in rooting out corruption - but there is also the small matter of the extraordinary story he tells us: that his "friends" have bankrolled the  lavish overseas spending on his children's behalf, to pay for their education, and to cover their everyday expenses.

In the book of any Ghanaian patriot and nationalist, who cares about public morality, and about the personal integrity of our leaders, saying that "friends" are funding his children's education, is not the kind of statement the hero of June 4th 1979 ought to be making, in the slightest.

Massa, do you think that if any of the people who sprung him from prison on the morning of June 4th, 1979, had had the slightest inkling that twenty-odd years down the road he would be making such outrageous statements, they would have risked their lives to free him from his Special Branch cell?

Well, I have no doubt at all that they would simply have left him to his own devices: to face the music alone, for his failed insurrection of May 1979.

Perhaps you can ask Captain Boakye-Djan, a key June 4th 1979 figure, who has the benefit of twenty years of hindsight, about the many betrayals of the ideals of June 4th, 1979, which Flt. Lt. Rawlings' many critics accuse him of having notched up!

So why should Mr. Baako - who cares about freedom enough to have risked his life criticising the regime then in power on many occasions, when it was dangerous to challenge Rawlings and Co. - "rest our ears", today, as you put it?

Massa, make no mistake about it  - Mr. Rawlings is a man who has a date with destiny: he will be made to stand trial for the overthrow of the Limman regime, as sure as day follows night. Naturally, having made the point, he will then be forgiven and pardoned: to live out the rest of his natural life in peace.

That will serve as a warning to future coup plotters wishing to take advantage of a democratically elected regime's unpopularity with the masses, to stage a military coup in Ghana.

The fact is that Mr. Rawlings  did commit treason on 31st December 1981 - and you must never forget that. And did he not preside over a regime that shot coup makers as a lesson for future coup makers? Massa, let us let sleeping dogs lie - Mr. Rawlings is better off that way, believe me!

Just leave Mr. Kweku Baako alone, Opanin. He has his faults like all of  us - but at least he loves his country enough to want to protect Ghanaian democracy, from the threat he believes Mr. Rawlings poses to it.

I disagree with many of the things he says in support of (and in defence of) this most incompetent of regimes - but at least I do know that he is sincere in what he says: unlike many of those who have sold their consciences to the highest bidders in the land: the greedy crooks in the present regime!

Hmmm, Ghana, eyeasem oo: asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!