Did you watch world news on television on Sunday? Dear oh dear. You may have missed out on the most exciting spectacle of the Bush presidency if you did not watch it. An Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at US president George W. Bush at a gathering of the press in Iraq. It was really amusing to see Uncle George dodging to fend off the shoes.
George Bush does undertake regular exercises but I could not imagine he had that quick reflexes.
Perhaps if one lost their family and friends in a useless war, kidnapped and beaten by militants, one could be traumatised into throwing shoes at the world´s most powerful leaders, more so when he lies about making the lives of Iraqis better than it were under Saddam Hussein. More than 4000 American soldiers have been killed, it is not clear how many Iraqi men, women and children have been killed or maimed for life and a whopping $600 billion has been wasted on this war in Iraq.
Whilst Iraqis were having their set of drama with the "shoe throwing incident, a handful of reckless officers of the Ghana police were busy trying to break bones and skull.
It is 2:15 AM at the time of writing this feature and the date is Monday December 15, 2008. I am sitting in my bed on my second floor apartment in Glasgow, Scotland. The weather looks ok as the weather man had predicted. I have a window that gives me a good view into the quiet Glasgow night. My laptop is tune to Joy FM in far away Ghana, which like many radio stations streaming online, would not break in connection when music is being played or at this time of the night. Have you noticed how the link kept breaking when you were listening to the news or tried to follow the vote counting during the elections? It was heartbreaking, nonetheless gratifying to get an uninterrupted 3minutes of online streaming. My own Uniiq FM was worst.
Don´t be surprised if by the time you read this feature the press in Ghana is replete with reports of a brutal assault on a photo journalist covering Jerry Rawlings, by some police officers accompanying the presidential candidate of the ruling New Patriotic Party, which is going into a second round run-off with the opposition National Democratic Congress.
Not surprisingly, a henchman of the NPP and close associate of Nana Addo has said the incident happened at the "blind side of Nana Addo". How incredible? For Nana Addo not to have seen a loud incident that had disturbed the serenity of a rather quiet City Hotel when he was reportedly standing just a few feet away?
Babs Hammer was not only beaten up and left with a deep cut to his head, his equipment was smashed and destroyed, and the candidate of the ruling party did not see or hear what was going on? A commotion that was loud enough to attract the attention of guests on the 3rd and 4th floors according to witnesses?
And since when did taking footage of a public figure in a public place and in the public interest become an offence, and one that required instant justice by a bunch of ignorant police officers who are ostensibly not interested in keeping the peace but doing the biding of a hawkish clique of the ruling party? Since when did the police got the mandate to determine what picture taking constituted a breach of privacy?
The arguments put forth by NPP party stooges that Babs was not an accredited photographer is ridiculous. Since when did they know every member of the journalism association?
And have they ever heard of the word "Freelance"? Assuming the victim was not a freelancer, did the police action meet 21st century policing? Why do we have courts and a justice system?
This certainly raises questions about the self professed human rights records of candidate Nana Addo, whose government arguably has presided over the worse human rights abuses under any democratically elected government in Ghana.
Let´s not forget it was under the NPP with Nana Addo as Attorney-General that the overlord of Dagbon, Ya Na Yakubu Andani was assassinated along with 40 members of his staff and family and yet not a single person has been brought to account even in the face of the huge body of evidence. An incident that undoubtedly was orchestrated overtly or covertly by an NPP inspired faction.
It is under the NPP, which professes democratic credentials, that a civilian politician was beaten to death by armed military men.
Let´s not forget it is under a democratically elected NPP regime that a National Security Advisor was intimidated and forced into a self imposed exile.
There is a litany of cases of abuse of the human rights of Ghanaians under the Kuffour administration, which Nana Addo has praised as the best thing to happen to Ghana than in any administration.
What happened on Sunday simply bore the hallmark of a political tradition that has used violence to intimidate Ghanaians. The forbearers of the NPP in their incessant attempts to oust Kwame Nkrumah went as further as planting a bomb in a bouquet of flowers and offered it to an innocent Ghanaian school girl to present to President Nkrumah with the view to blowing him off and causing extensive damage and terror.
This level of terror in the NPP was manifest again in the way they conducted themselves in their primary elections.
As if that were not enough, the party caused confusion in certain parts of the country including the Akwatia Constituency where ballot boxes were destroyed, opponents beaten and an activist of the government turning up in a police station with a box containing ballots and no one arrests him or questions where he got them from, Bawku Central Constituency where NDC agents and electoral officials were made to sign results under duress with a lone security officer intimidated and cowed into silence, Weija Constituency where disputed material where taken away in the cover of dark to the District electoral office and reportedly have been swapped en route with collaboration from elements of the military and police and Krachi West Constituency where members of the opposition have been terrorized.
The ruling party is in a state of panic but Ghanaians have spoken and the will of the people shall prevail. The way the National Democratic Congress beat the ruling party in Greater Accra and the Central regions, which are swing regions by all standard, is a clearer indication of where things are going.
Well meaning Ghanaians should resist any attempt to use harassment to subvert the will of the people. Any Ghanaian who loves to preserve the sanctity of our electoral process and "baby democracy" must not allow a power drunk, aloof, very corrupt, divisive, bunch house slaves and highly inept few to intimidate us using the police and military.
There are elements in the Western media who report inaccurately without an informed knowledge of the things they are talking about. A guest on BBC TV Sunday December 7 sought to give the impression that it was the ruling NPP that brought democracy to Ghana. This assertion is inaccurate and only makes hazier the already hazy the political dynamics in Africa.
Democracy, it must be said was not brought to Ghana by the NPP as the BBC TV guest sought to indicate. Indeed it was the forbearers of the NPP who extinguished the first democratic process in our country when they collaborated with aliens to overthrow Nkrumah and ostracised the government and members of the Nkrumah administration, the CPP.
Democracy was brought on in Ghana as most readers would be aware by the collective voices of Ghanaians when in 1992 we opted to end military rule in a referendum. And that democratic space was entrenched and made more credible when Jerry Rawlings, unlike most of his compatriots on the continent, handed over power when his party lost. Hitherto, Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah was voted to office by the people of Ghana, the administration of Dr. Liman also was ushered into office in an election following a period of military intervention.
What the NPP has done in the last eight years certainly does not epitomise a government that wants to entrench democracy. We must endeavour to tell our own story accurately.
Most of the Western media and observers will close their eyes to abuses and attempts to intimidate the people by the authorities as long as those in control of power are their friends. It has happened in Rwanda, it is happening in Egypt under their noses, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and so on.
I am sure observers and the media found it most convenient to ignore drawing attention to an attempt by the Kuffour regime to disenfranchise and deny eligible voters, most of whom NDC supporters who were away on business or family visits to Togo after it had assured the world that Ghana´s borders shall remain open before, during and after the voting. An action that had the potential of undermining our democracy. The government had announced two weeks before voting that Ghana's borders shall remain open but did otherwise two days before the polls without forewarning travellers under the cover of "threats to national security" which they always used whenever they wanted to cow people into fear.
What has happened elsewhere on the continent is atrocious and an embarrassment unto all Black people, it has made us a laughing stock and most importantly threatened the lives, now or in the future, of our wives and children as they are the worst victims. Ghanaians are trying to show Africa the way. We must not allow any retrogressive administration to hold us back.
Credit: Ras Mubarak [mmubarak79@yahoo.com]
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