'Who Win Is Good!'

Peace-Building wisdom sometimes lies at such incredibly close range and within fairly easy reach of our national aspirations, but she is often disguised as a simple statement of innocent fact, and told in the language of very ordinary men in the street.

You probably recall television pictures of the two young peace activists who painted their almost nude bodies up in NDC and NPP colours during the last elections campaign and walked up and down the streets of Accra attracting stares.

They had this inscription in Pidgin English written on their bare backs: “Who win is good.”

Good food for all grey heads in town, don’t you think? It is an elementary but profound proclamation of the fact that it is possible for rivals to engage in healthy competition for a prize and for one of them to win fairly without broken bones, fractured skulls or corpses.

What if someone has good reason not to want fairness, peace and harmony, Jomo? My Scotsman friend Julian Forsyth once told me that there is a secret, but simmering enmity between God and politicians, which people throughout the world know nothing about.

Why would that be? Forsyth says it is because politicians and God are in fierce competition for the same job, namely that of having control of the lives, and destiny of nations and people.

If there were calm, peace and mutual respect among people of different political persuasions and groupings, politicians would lose the competition to God. So? Solateedoo, they need constant conflict among the people to be able to win the competition.

Something very suspicious in this regard is certainly going on here: An increasing propensity for politically motivated mob mobilisation and violence at the very least opportunity.

A by-election in the Akwatia Constituency this week offered an opportunity as usual, for the forces of conflict and chaos to indulge their favourite hand.

Even before the first ballot was cast, 23 people had been injured in a clash. The average age of the casualties was about 21 years, with several more as young as 14.

I don’t know whether it is the case that party leaders and their followers have been watching too many television scenes of chaotic agitation among the people of politically unstable regions and think political violence is fashionable and epitomic of democracy or something.

Could it be that they are acting out contrived scenarios for the sake of sport or that they are really hungry for some bloodletting and wont rest until they see evidence that the apocalypse could indeed come sooner and more violently than they are bargaining for?

Then there was the case of political activists who massed up outside the offices of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) in Accra to protest the detention of former Minister of Information, Mr Asamoah Boateng, for allegedly awarding a fraudulent public contract.

The riotous conduct of the protesters led to the use of tear gas by riot police and the death of a protester hours after the clash was attributed to the encounter with the police.

Young unemployed people without much formal education who are in desperate search for a meaning to life are becoming a dangerous force in the peace-and-war equation of our politics, thanks to scheming politicians.

If politicians encourage overly exuberant young activists to confront law enforcement agencies and/or even lead such confrontations leading to avoidable deaths, what shall we say?

I listened to General Colin Powell speaking to Larry King this week on the latter’s show about the recent scuffle between renowned African-American scholar and Harvard Professor Louis Gates Jnr. and a police sergeant outside Gates’s house.

General Powell says knowing that most have experienced racist attitudes at one time or another, he has been speaking to young African-Americans frequently about the ever-present trap of being baited into trouble.

Powell says he tells black youth to co-operate with the police in every situation and thereafter, to sue the police if their rights are abused. Co-operate with the law and let that same law do the rest. That is how the rule of law, yah?

The BNI is in charge of protecting the state against all internal security threats. Those who co-operate with the BNI on request and find their rights abused can sue.

As a matter of fact, several former political appointees have sued and won their suits against the BNI in the past few heady weeks.

The courts ruled that the BNI had no right to seize passports and that the organisation had no right to interrogate suspects without their lawyers present. It will be interesting to see what happens if the BNI appeals against the rulings.

Article 14 (2) of the 1992 Constitution, for example, only provides that, “A person who is arrested, restricted or detained shall be informed immediately, in a language that he understands, of the reasons for his arrest, restriction or detention and of his right to a lawyer of his choice.”

The constitution does not say whether an invitation by the BNI for questioning amounts to an arrest, detention or restriction. The constitution does not also say precisely whether anyone who is being questioned by the BNI, but is not under arrest must have a legal counsel present.

If the BNI were like any other public organisation, it would most likely have sent to the media in recent weeks, piles of image-salvaging rejoinders mountainous enough to have kept great bonfires going on for several straight weeks running in all the regional capitals.

The organisation, unfortunately, works in total secrecy and is not in a position to defend itself. “Secrecy” here means the sharing of information in such a way that it is restricted to only a small group of people.

Thus, how the organisation conducts itself in response to the knowledge it has, will often appear strange to someone not in possession of that information.

Repeat: The bone of contention is not the outlandish methods the BNI employs in its operations, but complaints that the rights of citizens are often abused in the process. It is the courts which should determine that and not rioting protesters.

Those responsible need to step in and do something before the media, the Judiciary and the political opposition wreak such havoc on the image of the organisation, that it becomes a publicly hated and despised institution and ultimately rendered ineffective.

If that happens, this nation could become the proverbial sitting duck, as far as internal security threats are concerned and guess what that would mean..!

By George Sydney Abugri