By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
August 9, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

I don't think Ghanaians deserved the leadership of Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, when the latter on December 31, 1981 shot his way into the old slave castle at Osu, Accra. In the process, the then recently retired Ghana Airforce flight-lieutenant unseated the democratically elected Limann-led government of the People's National Party (PNP). He would denounce the managerial expertise of Dr. Hilla Limann and end up effectively dominating Ghanaian political culture, as an absolute ruler, or strongman, for eleven protracted years.

And so it is not clear what he means when Mr. Rawlings says to his fellow Ghanaians that: "We must all bear responsibility" for his singularly depraved abject misrule; and also that "people get the government they deserve" (See "Economic Woes: We Must All Bear the Responsibility - Rawlings" MyJoyOnline.com 8/8/14).

Well, is Ghana's longest-reigning dictator implying that people such as yours truly conspired with Chairman Rawlings to overthrow the Limann government? Or is he faulting us for being too young and naive to have backed his faux revolution that eventually exposed itself for the anti-Akan ethnic-cleansing pogrom that it incontrovertibly was? Mr. Rawlings is also reported to have made his rather irresponsible remark at his sprawling tax-payer underwritten residence while presenting some food items to two Ghanaian boxers, namely, Bukom Banku and Ayittey Powers.

Maybe somebody ought to remind the aging half-Scottish waif of the infamous Swedru Declaration that it was he who single-mindedly and thrice imposed his former arch-lieutenant, Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills, on the entire membership of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) as the party's unchallengeable presidential candidate. And so maybe he would be far more accurate to assert that it is the members, supporters and sympathizers of the National Democratic Congress, plus the godforsaken Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, Ghana's Electoral Commissioner, who ought to squarely bear responsibility for the present economic mess in which the citizens and residents of the country find themselves.

We must also hasten to point out that the NDC was created primarily out of the power-drunken neurosis of Mr. Rawlings. We must also point out the fact that the country's inflationary rate jumped from 120-percent in the wake of his ousting of Dr. Limann to an abominable 7,000-plus nearly twenty years later, when the Sogakope Mafia Godfather was pressured to hand over power to an authentic democratically elected civilian premier. And that premier, of course, was none other than President John Agyekum-Kufuor.

Then again must also be quickly pointed out that it comes as all-too-predictable that neither of the two NDC leaders who succeeded former President Kufuor has performed up to even a third of the latter's performance capacity in the six-odd years since Mr. Kufuor retired from active politics.

What the foregoing observation means is that Presidents John Evans Atta-Mills, of late, and John Dramani Mahama, incumbent, have performed as egregiously bankrupt as they had been expected to perform even long before either gentleman ascended Mr. Kofi Antubam's State/Presidential Chair. And well, he may not want to hear this, but about the only fundamental difference between Chairman Rawlings and Messrs. Atta-Mills and Mahama is that Mr. Rawlings deviously and criminally muffed up the majority of the Ghanaian populace - and his potential critics - with the AK-47 semi-automatic rifle, in what became widely known as the "Culure of Silence," while he and his murderous cronies literally took the country to the cleaners.

I also don't put any purchase on this nonsense about a shameless Welfare Kingpin like Mr. Rawlings and his freeloading family and associates feeling the unconscionable economic crunch imposed on Ghanains by the NDC of which he is the sole creator. And, indeed, more than several times, I have come dangerously close to throwing up when this SOB presumed to self-righteously and indiscrimantely fault others, mainly his successors, for problems created inescapably out of his inordinate penchant for brute power and the wanton exploitation of defenseless, albeit hardworking, Ghanaian citizens.

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