GHANA@50: LET’S DEVELOP AN ATTITUDE OF POSITIVE DEFIANCE FOR COUPS AND COUP MAKERS!!!

As we celebrate our Golden Jubilee as a nation, it is prudent that we reflect on how far we have come, how we have fared in comparison to countries that we started life with, the bane of our snail-pace developmental progress, and how we can catch up with and hopefully surpass those that are ahead of us. There can be no better time to do this than now.

Fifty years of nationhood has seen the greater part of Ghana being ruled by military adventurisms and dictators. So widespread was this canker such that one of such vaulting ambitious dictators could alone be credited with eleven (11) years of the military era.

Looking at countries like Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and the like and juxtaposing their enormous feats in the areas of good governance and uninterrupted civilian rule leaves me in no doubt to attribute our woes to military juntas.

We have had a chequered past and it is about time we cherished our new found freedom which has been given an even further impetus by President Kufuor and his government. Good Governance, rule of law, press freedom and a host of others can only thrive under civilian rule, It therefore comes to me as very refreshing when genuine lovers of the tenets of good governance like President Kufuor and his government repealed the criminal libel and seditious laws from our s statute books and in their stead, commenced laudable initiatives like “Peoples’ Assembly” and the decentralisation of the “Meet-The-Press Encounters” to the regions. These were all in a bid to give the citizenry an unfettered liberty to air their views and also to take the executive to the doorsteps of the common man. To them, we say kudos and ayekoo!!

In light of the above, it is my conviction that it will not be out of place to call on Ghanaians across the entire political divides to develop an attitude of “positive defiance” (I use this phrase advisedly and with no malice intended) towards notorious arid and professional coup-makers hooligans, and adventurists. I say so when we do not have chemical lie detectors to undergo a chemical interrogation to ascertain the genuineness or otherwise that underpin some of these “boom” calls for positive defiance by the military.

It would be recalled that in August 2002, ex-president Rawlings described the Kufuor administration as “the worst government the country has ever had” and called on Ghanaians and the military to topple it noting “we don’t have to wait for the next election to prevent the rot.” “There is something called unlawful order. We must learn how not to accept wrong things from authority – Positive defiance is what I used to call it.”

Be drummed home emphatically that the experimental years are over. We are content with the unrivalled and unparallel peace and stability that we are enjoying under our current democratic dispensation. At 50 years, our past and present leaders and the entire population should refrain from and resolve not to make “boom” and volcanic eruption like effusions” and unguarded appeals to the military to move to the Castle to advise the sitting President. This form of positive defiance advocated by certain people with coup antecedents is repugnant and an affront to our fledgling democracy.

As we celebrate our golden jubilee, let us resolve to treat military adventurists and adjunct-provocateurs with the greatest contempt and disdain that they deserve. Positive defiance for coups and coup makers 0professioanl and serial ones and starters alike) and not ones against a democratically elected government is what can propel us to a position that we can be much more proud of in the 50 years ahead.

I cannot end this piece on any better note than re-echo Bosummuru Kofi Annan, the proud and illustrious son of Mother Ghana’s call on Africa “to ostracise and isolate those who seize power through coups against elected governments.”

Celebrate a happy golden jubilee anniversary.