The Kidnapping Plot In Motion: Here Is Your Stone, ‘Prophet’ Rawlings!

Jerry John Rawlings

The recent alleged kidnapping of a ‘pregnant’ Takoradi lady has brought sad memories to all patriotic and peace loving Ghanaians.

Apparently, observers have been maintaining forcefully that the kidnappings are being orchestrated as part of a broad political stratagem to mar the peace and security in order to portray Ghana in the worst possible light to the international community.

I hate to admit though, but the fact remains that the revoltingly horrible leaked audio tape, alleged to have emanated from the opposition NDC’s meeting some time ago, somehow, gives credence to the sceptics claim that the owner of the voice in the audio has questions to answer over the alleged kidnappings in the country.

In the said leaked tape, observers can hear clearly how the remorseless suspect is detailing his diabolic scheme to cause mayhem in the country by kidnapping and terrorising the perceived opponents and their family members.

The suspect unblushingly went ahead to tell the audience, believed to be executives of the party, to attack the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Mrs Jean Mensa, and insult the then Peace Council Chairman, Professor Emmanuel Asante.

Given the circumstances, the sceptics may have a valid point for suggesting that the insecurity in the country is a scheming guile being orchestrated by some conspiratorial plotters to make the incumbent NPP government look bad in the eyes of the voting public.

To be quite honest, some of us were extremely concerned about the spate of vicious and calculated kidnappings and armed robbery attacks on innocent citizens and denizens a few months into the NPP’s administration.

It was against such backdrop that some of us shared in the late President Rawlings sentiments that the deadly attacks in the country could well be the work of unpatriotic partisan creatures motivated from either within or without to undermine the nation’s security; (See: I hope robberies are not politically motivated-Rawlings; starrfmonline.com/ghanaweb.com, 01/03/2018).

Ex-President Rawlings was reported to have expressed grave concern over the insecurity and thus wrote on his Twitter page: “Let us hope the recent robbery and killings is downright plain robbery and not a politically motivated action from within or without, calculated to undermine those in charge of the security machinery in order to pave the way for certain parochial ambitions.”

In fact, any serious investigative body anywhere in the world will cause the arrest of the protagonist in the audio tape over the ceaseless and mindless attacks in the country.

This is the reason why I hold a firm conviction that the Criminal Investigation Department has been too laid-back in its investigations. However, it is better late than never, they say.

I have stressed on numerous occasions that some of us regrettably witnessed the revoltingly ugly events which took place over a period of three decades (1970-1990s) and therefore cannot be hoodwinked by the inveterate propagandists to believing that political violence is not synonymous with NDC.

Truth be told, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) was formed on the ideals of militant vigilantism, and therefore it is somewhat baffling to hear the baseless claims from the NDC quarters that the party is not synonymous with violence.

The story is told, though vividly, that in their desperate attempts to defend their illegitimate power and lay the foundation for a supposedly true democracy in Ghana, the founders of the NDC officially set up paramilitary organs such as the People’s Defence Committee (PDC), the Civil Defence Organisation (CDO), which was popularly known as the Militia and the Workers Defence Committee (WDC), where the last two organs were later reorganised and renamed as the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR), whose collective mandate was to defend the revolution by hook or by crook.

The CDRs were established in villages, urban communities, and workplaces and intended to be the organs of popular power and political initiative.

In addition, Forces’ Defence Committees were established in the armed forces and the police service.

The June Four Movement was a militant mass revolutionary movement dedicated to keeping alive the ideals of the June 4 1979 uprising that Rawlings had led. It sought to arouse the population at large to assist in establishing so-called people’s power within the avowed objectives of the revolutionary process.

“The PDCs and the WDCs (Workers Defence Committees) had their own courts and “meted out justice according to no established legal procedures” [Amnesty International, 1983).

Unsurprisingly, therefore, the PNDC’s political opposition back then vehemently contested the democratic nature of such organs and saw them as nothing but state-sponsored vigilantes engaged in intimidation and human rights abuses (Source: U.S. Library of Congress).

It is against such background that some of us were extremely surprised when former President Mahama stated on radio on Friday 22nd February 2019 that President Akufo-Addo is rather the father of the militant vigilantism in contemporary Ghanaian politics.

Dearest reader, take my word for it; nothing could be further from the truth.

How on earth would a supposedly responsible opposition persistently organise clandestine meetings with the view to making the country ungovernable?

We cannot, therefore, accuse the critics of harbouring risible and inborn propensity for suggesting that violence is the National Democratic Congress’s (NDC) available political tool.

Given the ugly nature of African politics, some of us could not help but to echo the late President Rawlings’s sentiments of a probable conspiratorial plot to undermine the country’s security and the NPP government as a whole.

Apparently, the late Rawlings smelled a foul play when some people were hopping from one Radio/Television station to another nagging, shrieking and grouching over the serious national disaster such as the bloody armed robbery attacks without proffering any practicable solutions.

In as much as some of us do not want to succumb to the widely held assertion that politics in general is a dirty game, it would not be farfetched for drawing an adverse inference that the political terrain is full of manipulating geezers who will do anything possible to win political advantage.

We should, therefore, not lose sight of the fact that political opportunists are not limited to Africa; it is rather a global phenomenon.

However, in my humble opinion, it is our part of the world (Africa), where political gimmicks and extreme vindictiveness are widespread.

Perhaps, this is so because we have greater number of unlettered folks, many of whom cannot choose between unrepentant tricksters and morally upstanding politicians.

Like the late President Rawlings, some of us have been harbouring a gleam of suspicion on our mind over the evil hands of the faceless partisan creatures in the insecurity in the country.

If the mindless kidnappings aren’t politically motivated, what are they?

In ending, the NDC’s leaked horrible audio tape shows how some partisan creatures can conceive and deliver a diabolic plot with the view to winning electoral advantage over their opponents.

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By Kwaku Badu

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