Rawlings denounces media circus…on slain judges

Former President Jerry John Rawlings appears to question the motive for “a whole documentary” by a team of journalists from the Multimedia Group Limited detailing the murder in 1982, of four judges and a military officer in the early days of the putsch he led.

Rawlings concludes that the matter of the slain judges cannot be turned into a “political-media circus.”

In a tweet Tuesday describing those killings as “an unfortunate tragedy”, Rawlings juxtaposed the “hard, swift justice done to perpetrators” of the judges murder with “the organized assault and killings of the Yaa Naa and his 39 elders, for which those perpetrators are yet to see justice.”

“That is the fundamental difference – one group of four saw justice, the other group of close to 40 did not and has not!” said Rawlings of the killings of the Ya Na, Yakubu Andani II, then king of Dagbon in March 2002 and 39 others during the administration of John Agyekum Kufuor.

He insinuated that while a section of politicians point to the killings of the judges and the Major and paint some in society as murderers, the same people are happy to jump at the next opportunity to flag his name when he says something that rubs off them positively.

“We have rehashed and recooked history to make innocent people look murderous. And in the next breath using the same name to endorse yourselves because Rawlings has said he is cultured (compared to his predecessors). This is vicious and callous political opportunism.

“We cannot reduce the harm and pain caused families and the whole country by turning this matter into a political-media circus,” he said.

According to Rawlings, the NDC party itself has failed to see clearly what the plan of its opponents are which makes the party “fall for traps set easily” instead of focusing its fight to ward off this attempt to twist and manipulate the truth.

Instead, he says some members of the party are back to hang Rawlings because of a Daily Guide publication.

The Daily Guide on Monday published a news article quoting former President Rawlings who is also the founder of the National Democratic Congress as hailing President Akufo-Addo as “the most cultured president that Ghana has ever had in recent past”. The occasion was a United Nations Youth Summit with Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Special Advisor to the United Nations (UN) Secretary General, at the Accra Digital Centre last Friday.

source: Graphic Online