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06.10.2004 Press Review

EDITORIAL: Mills is not serious!

06.10.2004 LISTEN
By ADM

He admits PNDC as having worst human rights records Absolves himself and Accuses President Kufuor

"…On human rights abuses, he said the worst human rights records in the country were recorded in the first six months between January and June 1982 during the PNDC regime. He described the gruesome murder of the three High Court judges and retired army officer during that period as regrettable…He however pointed out that at the time the three High Court judges and retired army officer were murdered, he was not part of the government of the PNDC, but President Kufuor was because he was PNDC Secretary of Local Government at the time the judges and retired army officer were murdered…"

The quotation above comes from the Monday October 4 edition of the state-owned Daily Graphic and it is from a report on NDC presidential candidate John Evans Atta Mills' address to students of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi.

Clearly, the Professor is now trying to distance himself from the PNDC, which is understandable, for which sane mind wouldn't, especially after the terrible revelations at the NRC of the atrocities and human rights abuses of that dark period of Ghana's history.

It is a matter of public records that many Ghanaians, including the current president served in one position or the other during that period, and those same public records would reveal that President Kufuor and many others like him resigned their positions and moved on.

But whereas the then Mr. Kufuor resigned and moved on, Professor Mills moved in and accepted the full baggage of the NDC which his benefactor, ex-Flt. Lt. Rawlings always tells Ghanaians include his abortive May 15 1979 mutiny, June 4 1979 mutiny and December 31 1981 coup d'etat.

When Mills accepted to be Rawlings' number two man for Election '96, it was against his party's record of the worst human rights abuses in Ghana's history. To show his full allegiance to those abuses, he was always celebrating the June 4 mutiny and December 31 coup anniversaries with his benefactor.

When the NDC talks of its PNDC antecedents, it does not cut out January to June of 1982.

Professor John Atta Mills' attempt to dissociate himself from the PNDC while at the same time trying to drag the President into it smacks of desperation and something of a waste of opportunity since such sophistry is tantamount to misleading his audience, young students, some of whom had not even been born at the time the Professor was referring to and therefore required an honest, accurate and faithful assemblage of the facts.

But then in typical exhibition of what is often referred to as "intellectual dishonesty", Professor Mills decided to skew history for political gain - an action, which in true academia would have earned him the justified opprobrium of his peers.

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