Bloody Callousness!

Doctors at the 37 Military Hospital in Accra are working frantically to save the life of a man who was callously shot at by a driver of the National Security Council.

Francis Kwesi Twumasi, the national security driver, is a disgrace to a serious security coordinating department of the Office of the President and should pay dearly for his unnecessary pulling of the trigger.

We are pleased that he has been arrested and investigations into the case begun prior to his being taken to court. If he thought he could hide under the wings of the National Security Council and so impervious to the pangs of the law, he has got it all wrong.

We are told that the National Security Coordinator, a man who detests such reckless use of power, is not ready to condone the action of the suspect and has therefore left the law enforcement agents true to his character, to do their work as the law prescribes.

The story about what informed his callous action as presented elsewhere in this edition makes sad reading. While it is heart-wrenching, it brings to the front burner the issue of the quality of persons recruited into critical state departments such as the National Security Council.

Over the years it has become the preserve of party activists who by their orientation think partisan politics – even when they are supposed to be guided by the stringent regulations guiding the membership of such a state department - is a platform on which to display infantile character triats.

This is one of the many reasons why more pains should be taken in the decision about who to employ into such a department.

Indeed, we have had a number of avoidable loss of lives at the hands of people who should not have been armed, given their level of intelligence and demeanour.

There are persons in the security services who by their poor anger control, do not qualify to bear arms, yet they do so endangering innocent lives. The superior officers of such persons must go the extra mile to determine those who should be denied the bearing of arms lest they embarrass the particular departments they belong to.

Reading the story, we are scared about how dangerous it is to challenge armed security personnel who breach the law as some of them are won't to do occasionally.

In the case of the suspect under review – a man with no knowledge about traffic regulations or deliberately ignored them (regulations) – he was incensed because a passenger in a taxi cab had questioned why he was arresting the cabbie. The suspect had himself done a wrongful U-turn. Perhaps he thought being a national security agent he was above the law.

In his uncontrollable rage, he pulled out a firearm and fired at the jaw of the passenger who was only being a good citizen ready to fight for a poor cabbie with little or no knowledge about his rights as a citizen.

Let the law enforcement agents expedite action on the investigation so justice can be administered. We wish the injured man a speedy recovery. For others in the security services, this is an important lesson for them.