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With regard to NPP activists who are acting with impunity in the name of righting what went wrong when the NDC took office, they must appreciate that we live in an era of the rule of law and due process.
With regard to NPP activists who are acting with impunity in the name of righting what went wrong when the NDC took office, they must appreciate that we live in an era of the rule of law and due process.

Beginning from somewhere

When Christ Jesus told his disciples that they are obliged to forgive offenders seventy-seven times seven times, they naturally expressed their exasperation.

Indeed, Jonah, on gaining his freedom when he was vomited by the whale, to preach to the people of Nineveh, became angry when the people repented and were saved by God. Quite naturally, we all are happy when we wrong others and are forgiven but we find it difficult to forgive those who wrong us. That is why it is often stated that it is easier said than done.

But we must also understand the philosophy that two wrongs never make a right. It must be appreciated that just as our constitution talks about rights and responsibilities, there is the need to strike a balance between the fact that “two wrongs never make a right” and “it is easier said than done.”

Two things have exercised me for the past few days, the matter of an official accommodation for former President John Dramani Mahama and the reports that some activists of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) have attempted to seize certain public facilities in retaliation for what happened when the National Democratic Congress (NDC) won power in 2009.

When the NDC assumed office in 2009, activists of the party did not understand why certain public facilities had been privatised to individuals and went about seizing such facilities, including a facility at Ashaiman which incidentally had been given to a key member of the party. Nothing concrete was done about those discomforting developments. Similarly, the request by President John Agyekum Kufuor for the use of a building was turned down on the flimsy excuse that the facility was the property of the Ghana Armed Forces as if that was not part of state property. Then there were the ugly noises by some faceless group in the guise of Ga youth, who swore heaven and earth never to allow the former President to use the facility. 

One could equally recount the acrimonious posturing by a group led by Dr Omane Boamah and Mr Okudzeto Ablakwa in their fight to deny Mr Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey a full-blooded Ga the privilege to have purchased a government property in line with public policy at the time, although Jake had paid fully for the structure. Eventually the courts had to settle the matter in his favour.

Our elders have a proverb which suggests that when you are taking your bath and a mad person comes to take your clothing you do not chase the mad person in your nakedness, otherwise the public would not be able to distinguish between the mad and sane persons. What it means, therefore, is that we cannot continue to pursue the path of vengeance and retribution. The time has come for us to set new standards so that we could be judged by posterity.

There is one thing that must never be lost on anyone of us. For as long as Ghana is a constitutional democracy, we must never take the law into our own hands. We cannot continue the cycle of impunity with change of government. Those in the NDC must by now have realised that they did not act fairly when in 2009, they denied President Kufuor his just reward.

It is even worrisome that some provisions of the Presidential Transition Act were flouted by the very government which passed the law. We must look beyond the narrow confines of dealing with opposition elements and think about the larger interests of the country. But we also need to analyse the cost implications of providing accommodation for former Presidents as against paying them a percentage of the salary as rent allowance.

We equally must examine the convention of paying ex-gratia to politicians every four years when all others who work for the state do not have that privilege. The political group are no better citizens than others.

As a first step, former President Mahama must vacate the official residence and wait on the government to allocate him a permanent place. It is not good if it appears that he is unilaterally keeping possession or seizing the property.

With regard to NPP activists who are acting with impunity in the name of righting what went wrong when the NDC took office, they must appreciate that we live in an era of the rule of law and due process. The cycle of retribution cannot continue. The deviants must be persuaded to stop their wanton acts or face justice. If we had dealt with such impunity in the past, the bestiality would have stopped. 

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