BY Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

The call has gone vehement for the Mahama government to dissociate itself from the annual celebration of the June 4th uprising that saw the brutal and summary execution of some 8 top Ghanaian military personnel - both active and retired - some 35 years ago (See "Rawlings Must Stop Celebrating June 4, If... Prof. Baah" Peacefmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 6/5/14).

The latest call comes from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) political scientist Dr. Richard Amoako-Baah. His contention is that since June 4th is not an officially recognized national holiday, it is a flagrant violation of statutory law to afford it any semblance of a national political landmark. But even more poignantly, Dr. Amoako-Baah has absolutely no problem with the decision by Mr. Rawlings and his bloody "revolutionary" associates to celebrate June 4th, as long as public expenditure and state-owned properties are not used.

So far, it well appears that state properties have been illegally commandeered in celebration of June 4th since its statutory proscription some two decades ago, with the coming into force of Ghana's Fourth-Republican Constitution and a judicial pronouncement to the same effect. If so, then what it means is that any year since the advent of our Fourth Republican democratic dispensation, Mr. Rawlings and his co-celebrants ought to be retroactively fined for illegally using taxpayer-funded properties for the celebration of the same. The celebrants also ought to be judicially sanctioned for disorderly conduct and a flagrant violation of the peace and tranquility of our august Republic.

For this writer, however, about the only justifiable reason for the continued celebration of June 4th is if the key celebrants unreservedly consent to the immediate expunging, or expurgation, of the functionally hobbling Indemnity Clauses from Ghana's Fourth-Republican Constitution. This is because the Indemnity Clauses clearly offer undeserved legal protection for clinically violent and criminally minded citizens like the former chairman of the so-called Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and the so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) and his associates. For the latter's continuous celebration of June 4th erroneously presupposes that, somehow, the wanton and summary execution of Ghanaian citizens without due judicial process was justifiable. In sum, all three branches of government need to promptly make their respective positions on the illegal and morally and emotionally provocative celebration of June 4th public once and for all.

While I sincerely do not believe that this indelible blot and scar on our national memory ought to be cavalierly or lightly wished away, nevertheless, I am of the firm and well-considered opinion that Togbui Jerry Avaklasu has been able to self-righteously continue to celebrate his bloody sociopolitical, economic and moral mess and downright act of irredeemable savagery because fervid opponents opponents like Dr. Amoako-Baah have not found an effective means of countering the June 4th orgies and, in effect, putting Mr. Rawlings in his place.

And this can be done, as far as yours truly is concerned, by intellectuals, scholars and educators like the KNUST political scientist and his colleagues and associates at the nation's other major public universities and colleges organizing annual lectures and teach-ins on the veritable Neo-Nazi savagery that was June 4th, at about the same time that Mr. Rawlings and his fanfools gather to light their so-called eternal "revolutionary" flame.

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Board Member, The Nassau Review
June 5, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
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