Airbus scandal: why should Ghana burn?
In Ghana today, no matter what my crimes are, I cannot be prosecuted; nay, even be invited to answer questions.
Why? Because I can mobilise hundreds, thousands of party members to invade the police headquarters and/or threaten judges.
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For us, this is ‘rule’ by the majority.
Somehow, I don’t fear threats that ‘Ghana will burn if …’ those threats are more honoured in their utterance.
So when Stephen Atubiga made threats to that effect on radio on Monday, March 2, I waved it off.
But I cannot wave off his threat that "any judge who sits on such a case will vanish", in reference to the possibility of former President Mahama being put before court for his rumoured involvement in the Airbus scandal.
This is treason, for which no man should be walking free 48 hours after the utterance.
Judges are the law.
Without the law, we are a jungle where antelopes and duikers cannot hope to live to see tomorrow because the lions and cheetahs must eat, and no law restrains them.
Don’t forget that months before the night of June 30, 1982, when three judges and a military officer were murdered, this country had been treated to a cocktail of similar threats, plus an invasion of Parliament by workers, led by Joachim Amartey Quaye until one day, the voice of the people cried to heaven so loud that even the military government, of which he was a member, succumbed and allowed the law to work.
Why has Atubiga, so far, not been invited by the law? Simply this: we fear that millions of party supporters will mass up at the CID headquarters, as happened in the case of Kennedy Agyepong and the NPP in April 2012, and Koku Anyidoho and the NDC in 2018.
Yet in spite of myself, I have a certain sixth sense that this is not an NDC party decision.
Something tells me that soon, rather than later, this party of which former Finance Minister Kwesi Botchwey and legal luminaries Tsatsu Tsikata, Tony Lithur, Marietta Brew Appiah, Betty Mould Iddrisu and Kakra Essamuah are members will come out to distance itself from these ultra-menacing words.
No court has pronounced the former President guilty. Indeed, officially he has not even been fingered in the affair.
Which brings me to a development I find unhealthy and unnecessary. The case is still being investigated by Special Prosecutor. Actions and utterances from ministers wearing an
NPP badge only muddy the process and play into the hands of people who stand to benefit from permanently muddied waters.
Martin Amidu is still trusted by all sides, and is still seen as someone the NPP cannot influence. Ghanaians will believe him if it is he who drops the name, any name.
Unguarded utterances by overzealous NPP officials will be the surest way to make the Airbus investigation a ‘foolish case’.
What is the case? A top Ghanaian politician and his brother took a bribe of three million euros from Airbus between 2009 and 2011 to influence the purchase of a number of aircraft from the company.
That is all.
We must find that prominent government official and get our money back.
Unless Atubiga is advocating an alternative to the present system of rule by the law, how else can the truth be known? His statement amounts to an overthrow of the 1992 Constitution.
I refuse to believe this is an NDC decision.
Party supporters need to be told the truth, that this case emanated not from Ghana but the UK and the USA. It was purely a case of the British and American systems dealing with a corrupt company that bribed officials of certain countries to influence the purchase of their planes. It is for this reason that no Ghanaian official’s name is mentioned in the ruling.
When a similar bribery scandal broke out in America in the 1970s involving Lockheed Aircraft Company, the guilty company was investigated and punished.
Presidents and ministers of other countries resigned in disgrace or were fired and the government punished for their culpability in the scandals.
It never turned into Democrats versus Republicans.
For Atubiga’s utterances, I am advocating a strike by staff of the Judicial Service and an action by the Ghana Bar Association.
Civil society must rise up and save Ghana.
A National Day of Mourning must be declared to commemorate March 4, the day on which this statement was made.
Something like the Martyrs Day.