Opinions of Tuesday, 2 April 2024

Columnist: Iddrisu Abdul Hakeem

Anti-LGBT+ Bill: Akufo Addo's presidential treason and shame

President Nana Addo Danquah Akuffo-Addo President Nana Addo Danquah Akuffo-Addo

Article 19 Clause 17 has stipulated the law of treason which the majority of scholars have agreed to even dismiss as having no law of treason at all as there’s not a specific penalty clearly stated in that Clause of Article 19 of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana.

However, Reginald Nii Odoi and Edmund Amasah in their research seem to have departed from this narrative and view of not having a clear penalty for the offense of treason in our law books.

In justifying the controversy between the right to revolt or resistance, and in the defense of the constitution which is stated in Article 3 of the 1992 Constitution, they have stated a penalty of death for people whose defense of the constitution goes wrong in a revolt against the executive, or failure to defend the constitution.

So there’s a death penalty for individuals who betray Ghana and its people. Both those who staged the revolt (in defense of Article 3) and those who revolted against (a bad president who betrays his people and constitution albeit in a revolt, extrajudicially).

With the death (or murder) of the Member of Parliament for Ejisu, John Kumah recently, and the earlier death of the Second (or third) lady’s bodyguard in a mysterious “V8 accident”, the New Patriotic Party’s hope to stay in power has since been pledged anew. And Dr. Bawumia, our country’s recent history’s atrocious economic joker, has been gleefully energized and went to faraway Johannesburg to renew his propaganda antics.

Audaciously, there’s something the disgraced chairman of the Economic Management Team has anchored his hopes that certainly can’t be the unfolding economic tragedy his supervision has brought upon Ghanaians. At faraway Johannesburg in South Africa, he was even emboldened enough to refer to former president Mahama, the next president of Ghana, In Sha Allah, as the worst president in Ghana’s history.

Many have been shocked to the marrow what could have given Dr. Bawumia that temerity and truckload of confidence to still refer to the former president in such borrowed derogatory terms when President Akufo Addo is indeed Ghana’s worst and most clueless leader alive? Our elders say the blind man who promises to throw a stone at you has already stepped on it.

Since 2012, when Ghanaians began paying attention to what can only be described as secret-society-style political activities of the governing party, it has become an open secret about the NPP’s resort to “Blood Politics” or ritual sacrificing of key party’s goons for electoral fortune within the NPP.

Thus, every other general election year, some key figures mysteriously and disturbingly kick numerous buckets in a rather barbaric “human sacrifice” fashion Ghanaians have now begun to wonder what’s going on in the Ghanaian political landscape.

One would have thought that the NPP would begin to prepare their handover documents with the deteriorating sunshine paradise economy Dr. Bawumia created which collapsed at a pinprick with the advent of the coronavirus pandemic. But no.

The death of the Hon. John Kumah, as a potential human sacrifice, as has always been the modus operandi of the NPP since at least the death of JB Danquah-Adu in the buildup to the 2016 general elections, has since become the rallying point of these national enemies of Ghana. Criminals using voodoo to infiltrate our national vaults.

But, In Sha Allah, by the mercy of the blessed month of this Ramadan 2024, and the power of the glorious Qur’an, the voodoo of misguided malams and every rebellion “Jinni” shall not work on Ghana and Ghanaians this time around.
Fellow Ghanaians, recall the lawsuit against what I call the infamous digital pickpocketing the government of Akufo Addo framed as Electronic Levy?

It was dismissed by the Supreme Court before its arrival. By then, the government went ahead to continue with its thieving legislation on that levy with the support of some conscienceless, soulless, and food-is-ready lawmakers from the so-called majority side of the House of Parliament.

Hitherto, this Elevy nonsense, recalls the compilation of the unnecessary voter’s register which put the lives of Ghanaians in great danger during the COVID-19 pandemic. Clear-minded Ghanaians rose against it as it was a complete defeat of purpose as far as the observance of the Covid-19 measures outlined by the government itself was concerned. But the government and its co-idiots remained adamant about the new register and insisted on citizens being exposed to the deadly disease.

Who says the lives of Ghanaians do matter to these political pirates, thugs, bandits, and terrorists? One dollar stolen from inflating projects' budgets and kickbacks is more precious with the Akufo Addo-led government than saving the lives of our most important like even the Asantehene (cultural values).

What brought them to government, it is obvious today, was to recoup losses incurred having hankered after political power for eight years in opposition. Never to protect any Ghanaian life or the constitution of the Republic.

The matter was taken to court to seek an interlocutory injunction against the Electoral Commission from undertaking such a lethal enterprise. However, the EC went ahead even before the Supreme Court came out with a verdict. And as usual, our spineless and judicial turncoat judiciary eventually dismissed the lawsuit.

Again, when some citizens thought it was contrary to commonsense and logic that mobile phone sim cards be registered twice, and also challenged the logical mistake behind the idea that, only a Ghana Card be used as the only valid national document for the registration of sim cards, the current judiciary exposed its unwarranted loyalty to the executive by dismissing the case and the applicants with impunity, joy and alacrity.

In all these cases, our dear president, a supposed lawyer, leading, unarguably, the most fraudulent, corrupt, and double-standard executive branch of government in our lifetime as Ghanaians, never came out to say anything about any pending lawsuits in court and for which reason the compilation of the new register during a pandemic nor the e-levy passage be halted.

Does it then come as a surprise to any of us that the most useless and toothless supreme court of all apex courts in the world, the Ghana chapter, has decided not to dismiss a lawsuit by individuals challenging the final work of the legislative arm of government?

Someone must remind Akufo Addo’s justices and judges appointed to the judiciary and the supreme court in particular, that the constitution guarantees the autonomy and independence of judges and justices even after being appointed by the president. Under Akufo Addo, the Supreme Court has become the extension of the Ministry of Justice and the office of the Attorney General.

Greedy cowards judge without conscience and loyalty to the state and the constitution. The majority of them are stooges of the president and have shamelessly demonstrated the African adage that, the finger that feeds you is never bitten. In fact, “biting” the finger of the executive with teeth is even quite harsher for the judiciary: it can’t even “lick” the finger that feeds it let alone go against it.

For about eight years now, since the inception of this criminal cartel empire called government, the Supreme Court never took any decision that goes against the executive. Well, it was the same supreme court that gave the banditry ruling and verdict on the EC’s most obvious rigged election in 2020 which ushered these political gangsters into power in the first instance.

Chinua Achebe in 1987 described African leaders, in his Anthills of the Savannah, as "late-flowering medieval monarchs in every sense". He referenced Ali Mazrui, author of “The African Condition”, whom he Achebe said referred to Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, in that regard, as a Stalinist Czar.

Now that is the most evil and barbaric combination I seek forgiveness of God for putting the two (Stalinist and Czar) together in my writing. Chinua Achebe cruelly arrogated this description to African leaders at the time because, in his own words, "they are bloody reformists".

After almost four decades down the line, however, it’s obvious there’s a new set of African leaders above such an infantile description of their leadership. The majority of them can now be described as voodoo-cum-corrrupt-cum-treasonous reformists.

Under the guise of fake democracy, many African leaders, and our dear president Akufo Addo being their Tsar, Stalin, Hitler, maybe Mao Zedong of China, and Czar, all rolled into one, have long departed from murdering their people in cold blood. Instead, they have devised a modern weapon of mass destruction of their citizens, a more methodical way that kills painfully than the atomic bombs. Lethal and most wicked greed and corruption.

With one embezzlement of certain funds by a government official, the hopes and aspirations in medical care, good education, food and security etcetera of the entire nation, collapse like a pack of cards into a cul-de-sac. This is a modern-day war waged against states and their citizens by various presidents, including Akufo Addo.

So, today, Africa may choose to thank its leaders yesterday; the recent ones have been directionless, valueless, careless, clueless, shameless, and brutally betraying! And if the constitution defines treason as only waging a war against the government, president Akufo Addo and his kind have been guilty of treason and ought to be executed by all means in defense of the Constitution of Ghana in Article 3. “All die”, after all, “be die!

But you see, for many of us who have been observing, it is as clear as crystal, that anything the Akufo Addo-led opposition campaigned on and subsequently decided to implement, turned out to be an unprecedented fiasco, a sham and shame. This has been reflected and demonstrated in the relationship between the Judiciary and the Executive as enumerated above as in the dismissals of lawsuits against the Executive.

In Dagbani, we say that the size of the testicles in the cradle can most likely determine whether it’s a potential hernia infected or not.

The Akufo Addo administration in the first place has begun on the note of embarrassment and deception Ghanaians did not need PhD analysis of the political situation to predict there was fire on the mountain under his watch in the unfolding years to come.

For the man who boasted of his capability, superiority, and the wherewithal to become president of a whole country having to plagiarize even his inaugural speech as president, was a strong signal and a petri dish of what was to become of his government. But Ghanaians ignored all these glaring signals of failure before we could even say jack.

Akufo Addo's humiliating chest-beating that he was the best and most competent manager and guru of our economy when in fact he had obtained a Third Class (dis) Honours in basic economics for first-degree, spoke volumes to how detached the current government was going to be from the reality of managing the affairs of the country.

Probably, the Ghana Beyond Aid appears the most embarrassing of all after Dr. Bawumia. The unfortunate comments by the now Foreign Finance Minister, the embattled Ken Ofori Ata, to the effect that Ghana was a proud nation and beyond financial aid from the International Monetary Fund, IMF, turns out to be not only the aid the government seeks most shamefully, but it is ready to gobble up the proverbial human excrement of feces to access the finance.

In 2015, the Cable News Network, CNN, reported about 13 states that had banned same-sex marriages (LGBTQ) in the USA. These were Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, North and South Dakota, Texas, Ohio, Nebraska, Michigan, Kentucky, Georgia, and Alabama states that did not agree with the federal government’s directive of legalizing same-sex.

The heavens never fell in those states in the heart of Uncle Sam. The USA never denied those dissenting states funds. Today, extrajudicial killings are still being carried out against individuals in the USA who openly declare their abnormal sexual impulses.

It was embarrassing when the Local Finance Minister, Mohammed Amin Adam, had to issue an order to the president to restrict and gag him from performing one of his most fundamental duties as president: assenting to bills passed by the House of Parliament.

This is a classic example of the man who has decided to sell his head for a cap, and has unbelievably sold his own countrymen and women in exchange for peanuts and popcorn. A presidential betrayal. Treason.

Say what you like, accidental leadership occasioned by voodoo, is to blame for such a mere positional leader in our recent history who is driven by an inordinate taste for power grab without the slightest clue on how to prosper the people. Well, there’s borrowing the president seems to know how to do. What a shame!

Does anybody then disagree with the holy Bible, that “those who live by the sword, shall perish by the sword?”

The shame of President Akufo Addo has come full cycle, and the humiliation is embarrassing. Those who live by shame shall perish by shame!

We aren’t taken aback that a competent incoming president in 2017 who could not author his inaugural address and had to intellectually seek refuge in the intellectual labor of other presidents, is today grappling with possible high treason of betraying the people and the constitution he gave an oath to.
This is a shame on Ghana.