Editorial : When are these political violence & killings going to stop?

A 28-year-old teacher who has just graduated from the Oda College of Education, Silas Wulochamey, has reportedly been stabbed to death at Banda in Bono Region during an alleged clash between New Patriotic Party (NPP) and National Democratic Congress (NDC) supporters.

Though the incident happened almost a week ago, the police are yet to make any arrest. Their (police) defence, according to the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Bono Regional Police Command, Augustine Kingsley Oppong, is that “we have decided to let our investigator go down and gather all the pieces of information and inform Command as such. So we’ve not made any arrest yet.

“Our investigator will inform us of the next action we should take. People are asking whether there have been any arrests and why not now. In fact, we are gathering intelligence that will lead us to the right culprits so that we will not go and arrest some people and later release them that there is nothing against them.”

It is important to note that this is not the first time this senseless killing has occurred in our political history. Indeed, since the advent of the Fourth Republic in 1992, the country has recorded many of these politically-motivated killings. And, in most of these cases being referenced, the police always come out to tell the public that they are investigating, and that would be the end of the case.

The Chronicle is worried about this development, because it has the potential to blow this country apart in future if criminals masquerading sometimes as politicians are not punished for the crimes they commit.  People will begin to take the law into their own hands and try to seek revenge, knowing very well that the police, who are legally empowered to do so, are reluctant to act. This is what we, as a state, must avoid, hence our call on the police to act swiftly in such situations.

But, whilst urging police to work according to the dictates of the law, we are equally not pretending to be living in cloud cuckoo land regarding development in our political history where the law enforcement agencies have, somehow, become pawns in the hands of politicians. Because heads of security agencies are appointed by the government of the day, they are sometimes afraid to act on some of the crimes that have political undertones.

Ever since the Fourth Republican Constitution came into being in 1992, a series of crimes, usually emanating from political activities, have been committed in the country, but offenders of most of these crimes have not been punished, because the government of the day remotely supports it. A typical example is the Kume Preko demonstrations held under Mr Jerry John Rawlings’ regime, which were met with brute force by the Association of Committee for the Defence of the Revolution (ACDR), leading to the deaths of some innocent Ghanaians.

Apart from these unfortunate incidents, several by-elections that have been held under the current democratic dispensation turned violent, with the supporters and officials of the opposition parties mostly the victims. It is instructive to note that though the perpetrators of these election-related crimes are known, the government of the day will always refuse to prosecute, because their supporters or people they sponsor are behind the crimes.

This unfortunate development, we dare say, is what is motivating people to commit crimes during the period of political activities, because they know that, at the end of the day, nothing would happen to them.

In his book, ‘The Dragon Can’t Dance’, a Trinidadian novelist, Earl Lovelace, writes, and we quote: This is the hill tall above the city where Taffy, a man who say he is Christ, put himself up on a cross one burning midday and say to his followers: “Crucify me! Let me die for my people. Stone me with stones as you stone Jesus, I will love you still.” And when they start to stone him in truth he gets vexed and start to cuss: “Get me down! Get me down!” he says. “Let every sinnerman bear his own blasted burden; who is I to die for people who ain’t have sense enough to know that they can’t pelt a man with big stones when so much little pebbles lying on the ground.”

Though the opposition parties always cry wolf in an election-related violence with a promise to correct the wrongs when Ghanaians vote for them, they tend to renege on their promises and be singing different songs when they actually get to power, and even oppose those who refer them to their pronouncements whilst in the ‘wilder land.’ The same people will also not allow the police to do their work as specified by the constitution.

This has been the trend since 1992, and until both NPP and NDC, which have had, and still having the opportunity to rule Ghana change their attitudes towards the police and political violence – these unreasonable killings will never stop. To us, at The Chronicle, the solution for the problems lies in the hands of the police on paper, but, in truth, it is the government of the day, together with the opposition parties that must end it.

When the anger of the people over these killings gets to the boiling point, sometimes it is very difficult to even use guns to stop it. We need to learn from the experiences of other countries and safeguard the collective interest of our dear nation.

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