A Ghanaweb publication, on Wednesday May 13, 2020, sourced from Peace FM had the caption, “NPP, EC Leading Ghana Into Civil War, They’ll Get It – Boakye Gyan.” Coming from a known military adventurist whose achievement in the army was to be part of a group of soldiers who chose to turn their weapons and might against their seniors and armless and innocent civilians, just to show them how mighty and powerful they were, is to accept this with great amusement.
This statement was not occasioned from any show of oppression on the people by the current administration, or any abuse of the Constitution, and certainly, no establishment of a police state or military dictatorship in this republic.
So who is Major Boakye Gyan (Rtd)? To me, he is just one self-pitied military officer who regretted blowing his chances of becoming a head of state of this country. And now that he is no longer considered as a person of importance, he wants to be heard and noticed once a while, whether what he states makes sense or not.
May I ask Major Boakye Gyan whether he was in the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) when it made it mandatory for tax evaders to pay taxes into Account 48, but which was later emptied before the new administration took over? If it is true, then where is that money? Was he among those in the AFRC who were given lofty sums of money as ex-gratia after only three months of unsolicited public service, and he took off to London, UK, where he was found at party jams almost every weekend? If it is true, then he and Jerry Rawlings led the AFRC to loot our state coffers.
Was he the same person who was once domiciled in Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria, during the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) era and wanted to get in touch with any Ghanaian who could help overthrow the Rawlings-led administration?
If, indeed, he is capable of organising a civil war, why did he not stir one up way back in the early 80s to overthrow the regime of his one-time bosom friend, Rawlings, who had killed his brother while in search of him?
He keeps saying that the PNDC was an illegality because it overthrew a constitutional government. He need not remind us anyway, for we know that for sure. The question is why did he not gather the courage to overthrow that military regime? That period occasioned a civil war, not these peaceful times.
I get confused when I hear him in one breathe say that the PNDC is illegitimate and Rawlings must be tried for high treason, and in another breathe say that he is the father of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), because June 4 gave birth to the PNDC which gave birth to NDC.
Your wife has an extra-marital affair and gets pregnant, then gives birth to a child and you claim it is your true biological child. Is this how far confusion and desperation has taken Major Boakye Gyan in his unquenchable desire to join a political party and maybe become a flag bearer one day? I know the NDC has a Founder, but now we are also told Boakye Gyan is the Father of the NDC!
We are in peace times and Boakye Gyan is pushing for civil war. Look at this coward and bully; when he was needed to crossover to Ghana and overthrow the PNDC regime he agrees was illegitimate, he was hiding in La Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria, instigating people to revolt, some of whom got arrested and were detained in prison custody.
On the subject matter itself, the determination by the NDC to halt the compilation of a new voters’ register is becoming as confusing as Boakye Gyan is. That the NDC is ready to go to war and kill innocent civilians is certainly unacceptable.
The question everybody is asking is what at all is so sacred in the 2012 register that the NDC wants to maintain it as a national legacy, a national icon?
The NDC is claiming here that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) massively won the 2016 elections with that register, so what is the reason to change it. Look at this scenario. A football team goes into an away match at a hostile venue with the referees and match commissioners dead against them winning. Yet, they did win and escape with some serious injuries from fans.
Will that team say since it won that match it will always play under those same conditions? No, it will seek changes and a level playing field at all times.
And this is what the NPP wants, and this is what the EC is determined to do, to provide an even playing field for all, with a voters’ register everyone can trust.
But Boakye Gyan and the NDC will have none of this, and the question is why? Peter Mac Manu came out brilliantly in response to the NDC press statement, in which he put out the different years when the voters’ register was compiled, during which none of these incited any negative acts. In fact, he forgot to remind Ghanaians that the first compilation took place in the late eighties, for the election of assembly persons in 1988, and was again used for the 1992 General Elections. That voter’s ID was a simple receipt, a mere piece of paper, like the one produced when purchases are made. This was what was used for the first General Elections of the Fourth Republic, and yet no political party protested.
The NDC has always been talking about a back-up of two million voters, and this we were first told after the first round of the 2000 Presidential Elections. The question is has the NDC put up sleeper cells in the voters’ register, and with this a more advanced form of registration by Jean Mensah was actually going to put them to sleep forever, hence the discomfort within that party?
The 2012 voters’ register has numbers over 100% more than the total Ghanaian adult population in 2012, and we know that not every adult Ghanaian registered to vote, so where from the difference?
During the 2012 registration, some of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) registration equipment found their way to Togo, and Togolese were registered into our health insurance scheme, and the NHIS card was one of the proofs of citizenship. So a Togolese becomes a citizen. This, the Supreme Court rejected, and this, the NDC says, we should overlook.
The NDC is saying that we should collaborate with the Togolese authority to use their national identification system and provide the names of all Togolese on our register. So it agrees that some Togolese are on our voters’ register, and the question is; what if those Togolese used different names to outwit their system?
Now the NDC is leaning on the Covid-19 pandemic and social distancing to argue that the compilation must not come on; are we then to suggest that the opposition party knew how this disease entered the world? Anyway, if that reason should hold, then the General Elections should be put off, because there will be more crowd on the day of elections than on any day of registration.
Until the NDC can come out with very good reasons why no new register should be compiled, it should let peace be. As for Major Boakye Gyan (Rtd), I will suggest he should be dragged to face the law and explain himself. He may be seriously anticipating becoming that head of state he yielded to Jerry Rawlings.
Hon. Daniel Dugan
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Chronicle’s editorial stance.
The post Boakye Gyan, what Civil War, please? appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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