Might is not right – Yaw Boadu Ayeboafoh writes

If I had the opportunity to offer any advice to my Roommate, President John Dramani Mahama, I will tell him there was no need to have rushed to appoint the committee Operation Recover All the Loot (ORAL) at the time he did, not because it is irreverent, unnecessary or unimportant, but because it lacked legitimacy, legality and authority.

Indeed, the pledge to recover supposed looted public resources was top on the agenda of the NDC throughout the campaign rounds.

He should have waited after January 7, 2025 to have constituted the committee to help us recover any money that has been fraudulently taken from the taxpayer.

More important, it must be firmly anchored on the rule of law and due process.

Additionally, I would have advised against Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa serving as chairman of the committee because he is an embittered man, who has been so emotionally charged and incensed against supposed fraudsters within the New Patriotic Party and would not be objective in any critical evaluation of evidence that will come before the committee, whether hearsay or otherwise.

I would also have counselled against the membership of COP Kofi Boakye, due to his noble or ignoble association with the cocaine scandal which rocked this country and for which some Ghanaians baselessly had the effrontery to smear the Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II.

Candid
However others will take it, my advice is based on the sages saying that “the best compliment that one can pay to a friend is to be candid with him” as well as the saying by Dr Martin Luther King that sometimes certain good actions are done for the wrong reasons and when they do happen, they undermine the objective purpose for which those actions are founded.

It is also my view that the President will call certain activists within the NDC to order because Ghana is a lawful democracy rather than the rule of men.

In the aftermath of the December 7, 2024 elections, there were some key functionaries of the NDC who resorted to impunity and encouraged party supporters to presumptuously assume that by merely winning the elections, power had been transferred to the NDC, notably Joseph Yamin.

There was another character who purported to be the Chief Immigration Officer by declaring a ban on foreign travels by government appointees at the time. Another directed road toll collectors to resume work at the various stations.

At the time, the legitimate and informed refrain was that since there was a government in power, the responsibility for national security, law and order rested with Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

The tables have turned and that responsibility is now firmly in the hands of my roommate through Mr Prosper Bani.

I am saying all these because might is not right. It is imperative for Ghanaians to realise and accept that this country is a constitutional democracy, whose foundations are based on the rule of law and due process.

That is why any attempt to resort to violence and brute force to validate a claim or assert a right or privilege must be frowned upon.

Therefore, the court processes going on to ensure that the Electoral Commission carries out its mandate and conclude the electoral process to ensure the declaration of all the legitimate winners in the 276 constituencies is supported by all to enable the rule of law and due process to  triumph.

Embolden

We must all be thankful to God that despite the unguarded and  unfortunate comment by the Speaker of Parliament, without consideration to the outcome of the court’s processes that affected individuals would not be sworn in on January 7, 2025, they were all sworn in, except Ablekuma North, where the Electoral Commission had not completed the collation and thus no winner had been declared by then.

Perhaps the unfortunate comment from the Speaker emboldened a panel on TV3 a few minutes to the swearing in of the Speaker and MPs, to make puerile and infantile arguments as to why the MPs from Techiman South, Tema Central and Okaikwei Central should not have been sworn into office, with the concomitant of burning tyres on some streets in the Okaikwei Central constituency and the defeated candidates presuming that they have won.

One matter that I will give my full support to my Roommate to unravel is to atone for all the victims of electoral violence including deaths. Democracy, as Mr Kwame Pianim has always maintained, must involve the counting, but not the cutting of heads.

Therefore, no one must suffer from any election-related violence. However, it is not only the dead who deserve justice since those who are dead would not benefit from any such compensation.

Those who suffered injuries, dehumanisation, ill-treatment and deprivation, the living, must equally receive justice.

In that case, I suggest that those three Catholic priests who were brutalised and baselessly accused of stealing a grader which they had lawfully rented to help deprived communities in the Nkwanta District must be the first to receive justice by putting their tormentors, who openly accused the hapless men of God and subjected them to merciless beating, before court.

Extend
More important, since the intention is to extend the investigations to election-related deaths at Techiman in 2020 and the Ayawaso West Wuogon bye-elections, it must be extended to all such election-related injuries and fatalities, including the murder of an innocent man, in front of the Police Post at the Konkomba Yam Market, in Accra, in the full glare of the public with police personnel fleeing, and describing their action as “retreating for tactical reasons” in the middle of January 2009.

There is the need for a comprehensive investigation and the necessary action to stem the menace once and for all and to remind ourselves that elections are about free choices and not violent intimidation and murders.

We have suffered too much in the hands of hoodlums and deviants hiding under the canopy of partisan support.

Too many common criminals and sadists are enjoying from bestialism in the spurious name of partisan politics.

All well-meaning Ghanaians must stand up and support my Roommate to deal with the cancer comprehensively, not selectively.