National Security Or Party Security?

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Created on Wednesday, 26 September 2012 00:00

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National Security Or Party Security?

Kennedy Agyapong is a man who is loved and hated in equal measure by political friends and foes alike. Without a shadow of doubt, he is the greatest threat to ‘national security’!

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Hey, before you say “haaba” or dismiss this opinion, think of these, Woyome (as an event) and its casualties.

Odododiodio war declaration, treason and genocide charges (Attention, ICC), Yaw Al Shabab Boateng Gyan tape.

Kennedy is not one of your finest politicians in town. I am not sure whether I am prepared to call him a politician. As a Member of Parliament, his voice is seldom heard in the house. His brashness and harsh tone of speaking, like www wrestlemania, exciting as it is, is not something you would like your children to copy at home. I think, sometimes, when he speaks, his microphone should be turned off, whether he is on radio or TV. At worst, he should be shown the red card from the studio or political platform, wherever and whenever he gets into his element. The man has no self restraint, and sometimes, words that are not allowed on civilised platforms pour out from his lips like water spillage from the Bagre dam.

You wonder why he has his way all the time, money talks!

His wealth aside, his overconfidence and unorthodox politics aside, Kennedy Agyapong is the one of the most important individual contributors towards the fight against corruption and abuse of office in the Fourth Republic (Anas Aremyaw Anas is a legend in this department).

Kennedy’s outdooring of Woyome has drawn attention to official (un)armed robbery, officially approved 419 dressed in elegant designer clothes with the label Judgment Debt.

Here are a few updates for your dictionary, for words and their meanings change with the passage of time.

JUDGMENT DEBT – Serious economic crimes against the state by state officials.

NATIONAL SECURITY OPERATIVE – Unofficially an NDC footsoldier with National Security ID sent with guns and fast cars to spy on NDP and to cause trouble at Chereponi and nationwide on election day.

Kennedy is said to be suffering from hypertension and was released from his ‘genocide’ detention on health grounds. Strange, isn’t it? Reason is treason is a non-bailable offence which carries a death sentence for the accused if found guilty. Why not send him to hospital under police protection?

Maybe the judge, like all sensible Ghanaians, saw the naivety and the senselessness of ‘killing a fly with a bulldozer.’

Our friends in the medical profession advise thus, “when you are sick of high blood pressure, avoid highly charged emotional and stressful situations. They may cause your blood pressure to rise.”

Kennedy Agyapong’s response seems to be like this. “I am very uncomfortable in calm situations. Indeed my BP rises when there is serenity and calmness in the country.” A biological or medical deviant, for want of better expression, if you ask me.

In a bid to ‘calm his nerves’ after the raging fires of Woyome and treason have been put out, the Assin North MP, with the release of the Yaw Boateng Gyan tape, has caused yet another earthquake that measures 5.6 in magnitude on the Richter scale.

If you believed in the saying that ‘talk is cheap’ or doubted it, you are wrong. Indeed, talk is not only deceptive, but dangerous.

Otherwise, how can anyone, by any stretch of the imagination, believe that Yaw Gyan, the cool headed church elder, could be the owner of the voice and the words on the tape?

I can hear some concerned citizens saying (indeed some have gone to the police); ‘Fellow Ghanaians, if there is any bloodshed during the December election, the first person to look for to find answers from is Yaw Boateng Gyan, the National Organiser of the NDC, the ruling party.’

Such a view may be shortsighted. So is the view that Gyan, together with the National Security Coordinator, Larry Gbevlo Lartey, and the Finance Minister, Dr. Kwabena Duffour, should be investigated.

Please, do not be fooled. Yaw Gyan is the National Organiser. He does not do things on his own volition for the party. He cannot do anything outside the agenda of the party. The entire command structure of the party is in the mix.

So, rather than call for the head of Yaw Terminator, or for investigations, it looks like Ghanaians should brace themselves for the worst. The NDC seems to be hell bent on winning the elections by fair or foul means. And Yaw Gyan, as Organiser, has been tasked to handle the organising aspect of it. Definitely, other people will handle the monitoring, coordinating, controlling and other facets of the agenda.

I can imagine the embarrassment this tape has caused the NDC establishment. Part of their unholy plot has been stripped naked. But, trust the NDC. Unlike the NPP who distanced themselves from Kennedy’s tribal war declaration, they will never disown their own. They have dismissed the contents of the tape as mere bravado or bluff, but they have not dismissed the Organiser. Don’t throw away the baby with the bath water.

Richard Quashigah, Propaganda Secretary, describes the release of the tape as an attempt by the NPP to ‘equalise’ the backlash that greeted the All Die Be Die, Yen Akan Fo, and Kennedy’s misspeak.

Political equalisation, an expression introduced into Ghana’s political vocabulary by the incomparable ‘logician’ Kweku Baako Jnr in the wake of Woyome, captures how political parties, with the active connivance of the media, have reduced the art of governance to a mutually destructive game of fault finding.

I wonder why any self respecting media house should seek the views of a Propaganda Secretary on a matter concerning his/her party. What do you expect a Propaganda Secretary to say about the alleged infiltration of Party Thugs into the security services? That it is true, and the party unreservedly apologises for that felony and consequently withdraws the thugs from the Special Forces? That the ID cards and the fast cars were not meant for a Hollywood blockbuster movie or Formula One, but to cause carnage and blame it on All Die Be Die?

Expect Richard Quashigah to give you that kind of answer after the second coming of Jesus Christ.(Parousia)

But, seriously speaking, there is something fundamentally wrong with empanelling our political analysis programmes in the media all the time with politicians. There is something funny about inviting political actors or players to comment on their team’s performances, or a team member’s non-performance, or an opponent’s output on a media platform.

Public office holders are employees of the people of Ghana whose thought, voice, and conscience are best represented by the academia, pressure groups, advocacy groups, policy think-tanks, professional bodies, religious groups, etc. Employees don’t set corporate standards. Employees don’t do performance appraisal (even though they contribute to it).

Why have the media of the Fourth Republic allowed politicians to set the agenda and be their own examiners? Why have they reduced the rest of the citizenry to mere spectators whose cacophony of noises in the stands only adds flavor and not substance to what goes on in the field of play.

The greatest disservice by the media to the qualitative growth of our democracy is this practice. This culture is the mother of pointless fault finding and the politics of insults, which has also given birth to ‘babies with hard teeth’.

One of the’ hard toothed babies’, Felix Kwakye Ofosu, assured Ghanaians that the Yaw Boateng Gyan tape was no Al Shabab or Boko Haram threat, and that it was a party organiser “wooing” his supporters, like a man promising his woman who is trying to deny him ‘favours’. ‘Odo me de car no be ma wo.’

The promise of the National Security ID cards by Yaw Terminator, and the confession that he has had discussions with the National Security Coordinator, who complained of abuse of such privileges in the past, has dealt a fatal blow to the integrity of National Security.

Yaw Gyan’s inescapable destiny is in the courts where he would be tried for subversion or some such legal offence sooner or later. The anger of the people will be lessened if the elections are free and fair, and free of violence, and both parties accept the outcome. But National Security has a lot of work to do to repair its soiled image, have job security and personal safety for its personnel after a change of government, and more importantly, inspire confidence in the Ghanaian electorate. National Security should stop being its own enemy. Since the days of the Special Branch, this all important intelligence department of the security services has succumbed to the whims of incumbent regimes and done all sorts of things to help perpetuate their hold onto power. Persecution becomes the lot of lots of its members, after a change of regime, which surely happens, like night after day,

Will the nation be secure in December and after? The anxiety which has propelled this rhetorical question will be misplaced if National Security will act as National Security, and political parties behave like political parties, and not as warring factions. But with fake security ID cards, probably secured by Yaw Terminator, and fast cars in place on the one hand, and an opposition ready to resist any real or perceived cheating with all ‘die be die’, the picture doesn’t look good.

Mr. Taaka Tiika Gangali what doest thou? Practice what you preach.

God bless our homeland Ghana.

Source: Osabarima Kwasi Owusu/The Chronicle, 24 September 2012