Chairman Wontumi’s prison conviction is right if….

The writer neither sheds no tears for, nor condemns the custodial conviction of, Mr Bernard Antwi Boasiako aka Chairman Wontumi. Again, he does not condemn his prison sentence for being selective justice as it’s the opinion of a section of Ghanaians.

The progress of Africa, especially Ghana, is immensely retarded because of the lack of strict application and enforcement of the laws, hence many people committing all sorts of crimes with impunity. The crimes so committed exacerbate the politico-economic woes of the country.

How can we as a nation curtail, or get rid of, the problems the country is beset with to be able to progress if we don’t start from somewhere to strictly enforce the applicable laws?

Assuming it is a selective justice, the question now is, has Wontumi indeed committed the act for which he has been found guilty and slapped with a 20-year prison sentence? If he has committed that act but for which prevailing laws forbid, then he must be held accountable for his action.

The nation’s politicians and public office holders have been getting away with blue murder for far too long and it is about time they were severely punished for their irresponsible acts impacting negatively on the economic emancipation of the country.

If the NDC are punishing NPP guys and gurus found to have breached the laws for their selfish interests, the writer is 100% happy and supportive of it. Call it selective justice, I don’t care. And who cares, if the means taken will finally mitigate the appetite of infatuation with corruption, various abuses of power, embezzlements, and total disregard for the laws of the land by the nation’s politicians and public office holders?

It is obvious and a bemoaning fact that illegal or irresponsible small or large scale and alluvial mining is devastating the forests, lands, and water bodies of the country yet our selfish, greedy, and money-minded politicians don’t seem to give a hoot.

When the NPP comes back to power which they surely will, then they should do the same to the NDC offenders. By doing so, the politicians from both sides of the political divide will eventually be compelled to eschew their irresponsible and corrupt behaviours to pave the way for the realistic progress of Ghana.

Until we can suppress the will of the politicians to commit crimes as and when they like, and get away with them, Ghana will never develop but keep mired in her current disgraceful state of lawlessness, incompetencies, partisanships and polarizations with misfits in positions of power.

The other time under the NPP government, some NDC members of parliament had illegally taken double salaries for years yet for reasons only best known to, or understood by, NPP and probably bordering on “scratch my back I scratch yours”, they were let off the hook.

Again, some well placed rich man in Ghana had issued dud cheques in payment of his imported goods and without mentioning his role in the collapse of the Ghana Merchant Bank, etc., the NPP government overlooked it. Is it how to govern a country in the hope of advancing the nation economically? No and no!

With Wontumi’s conviction and incarceration, it has dawned on the nation that politicians can no longer commit crimes and hope to get away with it without facing punishment.

The days of the Ghanaian political philosophy of, “you scratch my back and I scratch your back”, is about to end with Wontumi’s incarceration and the prosecution or intended prosecution of other accused former NPP government appointees like Mr Ofori Atta now hiding in the USA.

If there has not been a misapplication of the law but followed through properly to convict Wontumi, then there must be no shedding of no tears for him but if otherwise, then let us cry for him.

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