Is John Paintsil a Sacred Cow?

John Paintsil

The inability of the Police to prosecute John Paintsil of the Black Stars fame has set me thinking. Is it because the Law is an Ass or some other persons are more equal than others before the Law? The other day I had a heated debate on the dropping of criminal charges against John Paintsil with a colleague of mine. He was of the view that Ghanaians do not treat their heroes well. I had a different opinion and still have. Black Stars or no Black Stars, the verdict is clear. John Paintsil should have been cooling off somewhere in the Police Cells or perhaps in jail for turning her wife into a punching bag.

Dropping the charges against him has confirmed my fears. There are two sets of laws - one for the rich and powerful and the other for unsung minnows like you and me. We should all bow down our heads in shame for what happened. The excuse given by the Police that the complainant decided to discontinue the case is not tenable. Could he do such a thing in Israel where he plies his “trade” and go scot free?

In the Seventies, there was a famous lawyer in Sunyani, Ohene Djan by name. He was being prosecuted on a charge of murder. He pleaded not guilty to the murder charge but guilty to manslaughter. The court upheld his submission. There was hullabaloo in the country when the final verdict was announced. It came out that there is such a law in our statute books but was known only to the learned, the informed and the highly placed in the society.

In 1973, Congress impeached President Richard Milhous Nixon on a two count charge and was due to be sentenced. Nixon's hand-picked successor, Gerald Ford gave him a presidential pardon. Americans were disgusted. They felt the former President ought to have gone to jail for attempting to obstruct the judicial process of the country. What did the Public Relations outfit at the Presidency do? It embarked on a sustained media publicity to court sympathy for the former President. It published a picture of ex-President Nixon recovering from an operation on his leg. It won him the much needed public sympathy. A similar thing happened in former President Hosni Mubarak's case. When majority of Egyptians were asking for the death penalty for their former President, the Military Rulers published a picture of their former Commander-in-Chief in a state of coma at a military hospital. It achieved the desired result.

I therefore see nothing wrong in John Paintsil's case. When it came out that the wife beater of a football star had fainted and was rushed to a private hospital, it did not take me long to know the import of the news. It was to court public sympathy. No more, no less!

Back to the substantive issue. John Paintsil, a player of the National Football team, the Black Stars was alleged to have turned his wife into a punching bag. The woman was said to have taken refuge in their neighbour's house. One account had it that she jumped over the fence into the next compound to escape the fury of her husband. There is conclusive evidence that another altercation took place in the Good Samaritan's house. This resulted in both “gentlemen” assaulting each other.

The Good Samaritan, one Mr. Dankwa reported the case to the Police who arrested and put John Paintsil in their cells. According to Mr. Dankwa, the ugly incident in his house was captured on tape by his children. The wife went to the hospital and when asked as to how she came by those injuries and bruises, she attributed them to a fall.

This brings me to an incident which happened in the early Nineteen Eighties. I was then teaching at Ghanata Secondary School, Dodowa. I stayed in a rented “apartment” in town, not far from the school. I became friends with two other tenants in the house. For the sake of our friendship and because they are not here to give their own version of the incident, I prefer not to mention their names, but to refer to them as Mr. A and Mr. B. I was single but the two were married. Mr. A was from Kumawu and worked at the Eastern Regional House of Chiefs, whilst Mr. B came from Kordiabe and worked with the local Education Unit.

We formed a triumvirate and could often be seen together in the evenings discussing pertinent issues. One evening the three of us went on a rendezvous. After “quaffing” some bottles of beer and the local akpeteshie, we returned home and retired into our various rooms. The time was about 8.15 pm. About thirty minutes later, we heard some commotion in the room of Mr. B. There were shouts and curses, then the cry of pain. Somebody was using a cane or belt to whip another. What do we do? Mr. A and I held some consultations and we decided to go and find out what was happening.

The door to his Hall/Parlour was not locked and so we gained easy access into the room. But we met an obstacle when we wanted to enter the bedroom. It was firmly locked and that was where the entire action was taking place. We knocked on the door but there was no answer. A louder knock, but still there was no answer. Then a loud bang and there stood our “Mike Tyson” in shorts and sweating profusely. H asked of our mission and we told him we had come to find out the cause of the commotion in his room. He said there was nothing wrong and banged the door on our faces. We left our Tyson to complete what he had started.

But the most surprising thing about the entire drama was that the woman had stopped crying while we were with the husband, but she resumed her wailings and crying the moment we left the place. Women, you can't understand nor predict their actions.

The next day we were all happy when the wife who was a teacher at the local Presbyterian Middle School went to the hospital. “That's it!”, we said to ourselves. That will teach him a lesson! We thought the wife would report the matter so that the husband would be arrested. But we had the rude shock of our lives when she came to tell us that she didn't tell the staff at the hospital what had actually taken place. She had told them she fell down. The staff questioned her on her claim but she stuck to her story. That day I learnt some bitter lesson from the wife. One was that no third party should interfere in disputes or altercations between couples. She asked us these probing questions – what would her parents and that of her husband think of her if she had reported the case to the people? How will the townsfolk look at her after the incident if she had reported the case and the husband had been arrested? Would she be able to witness the beatings the Police might give her husband if her Mike Tyson had been arrested and taken to the Police Station? Finally, what would she tell her children if she had told the truth and the husband was arrested, prosecuted and probably jailed? To her, it was the best option out of a helpless situation.

But that was then!
Mr. A and I felt somehow guilty and responsible for Mr. B's irresponsible behaviour. We were guilty by association. People might say if we had not gone out with Mr. B (who might have acted under the influence of alcohol), he would not have used a cane or his belt to whip his wife the way a teacher might whip a recalcitrant pupil. And the wife was a teacher, for that matter!

From then on, we distanced ourselves from Mr. B. I had learnt my lesson and in a hard way, too!

Now, let us go back to John Paintsil's issue.
Are the police telling us that even if there are tell-tale signs that someone has been assaulted, they cannot do anything about it unless someone comes to lodge a complaint of decides to testify. Is that what the law says? If that is so, they should tell us why they spend elaborate time and money to investigate matters where there are no witnesses or where the witness refuses to testify? On issues of planning coup d'états, do the authorities always wait for somebody to come and complain before arresting the culprits?

Why did the Police not invite the wife to testify in court? If she goes and tells lies after she had sworn to tell nothing but the truth, the Police should then charge her with perjury. Again, could they not have charged our Good Samaritan, Mr. Dankwa with an offence like passing wrong information to the police or wasting their time when he decided to discontinue the case in court? At worst Mr. Dankwa should have been subpoenaed to testify and regard him as a hostile witness.

Is there any law like that? If there is none, isn't it time the Attorney General and Minister for Justice think of enacting any such law?

Let me make a brief comment on the action or is it inaction of our Good Samaritan, Mr. Dankwa. Can he in all honesty be included on the list of Ghanaians who qualify to be regarded as patriots? No, he doesn't come anywhere near that list. What he is telling us is that because the Paintsil family is their friend and his children happen to be friends of the Paintsil's, the assault and battery charges against his friend should not be prosecuted. If we go on that tandem, are we not heading towards Armageddon? This is the bane of the country. What he is telling us is simple. If somebody from my town or village embezzles state funds, the fellow should not be prosecuted on account of being my town's man. What will that person do to me with all that money at his disposal? Will my defending him put food on my table? Definitely, not! The Itsekiris have a saying that “After all, he no dey garri me”. Mr. Dankwa, by withdrawing the case from the Police Station, has done a great deal of dis-service to Mother Ghana.

Let us not forget that when President Bill Clinton had an affair wit Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern, Americans did not say he should go scot free. Impeachment proceedings were started against him by Congress. Clinton's wife, unlike that of Paintsil gave him her own dose by making him sleep on the couch. Ouch it pains but that is America for you!

Etim Esin, a one time super brat of the Nigerian Green Eagles was alleged to have raped a Spanish girl in Spain. He had to run away to take shelter in Nigeria, his home country. That put a pre mature end to his football career. If he had stayed, he would have faced arrest, prosecution and possibly, imprisonment. Mike Tyson, a boxing legend raped an American Beauty Queen contestant and spent some time in jail, even though the girl in question went to Tyson's hotel room on her own accord.

I have shown keen interest in Paintsil's issue because a similar case happened in my holy village of Abomosu where a man accused his wife of infidelity and decided to act God by dispatching her to an untimely grave. The way he went about it was gruesome. He decimated her body parts and when it dawned on him the repercussions of his action, he fled the town. Why did he not stay behind to face the music? Perhaps a similar scene might have been enacted if the wife had not sought asylum in Mr. Dankwa's residence. And that is the more reason why Paintsil should have been left alone to face the music.

If John Paintsil, a member of the Senior National football Team who has played the greater part of his professional career outside the country and is aware that in those countries, assault and battery are regarded as serious crimes could turn his wife into a punching bag and expect to go scot free, then there is something very wrong with the footballer or the people of this country.

If a man cannot control his anger in a fit of madness to the extent that he unleashes his fury on his helpless “beautiful butterfly:, such a person does not deserve any pity from the law. If nothing is done to him, he will graduate from a being a “baby wife beater” to an “adult wife killer”. The Holy Bible even admonishes us not to let our anger travel to the next day.

It is also an acknowledged fact or convention that if someone is being pursued and the person enters somebody's house, the pursuer does not follow his/her victim into the house. This is a long held convention and anyone who goes against this norm is given a heavy fine by the Traditional Authorities. The Elders will add that if the owner of the house takes a pestle to knock the head of the pursuer, “na nobody cause am” but the intruder himself.

Even the Holy Bible gives credence to the above held convention. When Moses was allocating lands to the twelve tribes of Israel he created some safe havens which he named “Cities of Refuge”. Whosoever committed an offence and ran to any of the safe havens, was free from arrest or prosecution as long as he remained within the confines of the city. Why is John Paintsil's own case different?

This case has also brought out one useful lesson. It has exposed the hypocrisy of the GFA. Immediately they heard that John Paintsil had been arrested by the Police for assaulting his wife and a Good Samaritan whose only crime was to shield the defenceless woman from further pummeling, they rushed to the Police Station and started to pull the strings. In no time, the wife beater was released from police cells and the hypocritical GFA thumped their chest for perverting justice.

Readers will recall that when Andre Dede Ayew was substituted in an international match and he expressed his disgust by uttering some incoherent statements, the hammer of Akwasi Nyantakyi and his protégé, Coach Akwasi Appiah descended heavily on the poor innocent boy. He was asked to render an unqualified apology. This was in the public domain before the letter got to Andre Ayew. When did the GFA realize that in a fit of anger or frustration, a person could lose control of him/herself and act irrationally? And since the GFA has now realized this basic principle in life, is the Board going to acknowledge its mistake by rendering a public apology to Dede? Which of them deserves to render an apology – Dede Ayew who showed his frustration by making some utterances after being substituted in an international match or John Paintsil who nearly beat his wife into a state of coma? Yes, the hypocrites in the GFA have been exposed. Their hidden agenda has been unmasked and the masquerades should bow down their heads in shame.

What is Nana Oye Lithur saying about the non prosecution of Black Stars Player, John Paintsil? This is the time to speak out. Her silence is to deafening. This is one case Ghanaians expect her to speak on, not the rights of Gay activists who, anyway do not have any special rights, apart from those being enjoyed by every citizen of the land.

I ask. “Is John Paintsil a sacred cow? Is the law an Ass? If Paintsil is not a sacred cow, why is the case not in court? He must be arrested, prosecuted and if found guilty spend some time in prison to serve as a deterrent to others in future!

Arrest him now!!
Daniel Danquah Damptey (0243715297)
([email protected])([email protected]

)