We Don’t Believe in Justice as a Nation, Mr. Baako

Let’s put this right upfront here – Nana Akufo-Addo’s Senior Minister, Mr. Yaw Osafo-Maafo, the former Finance Minister in the erstwhile government of President John Agyekum-Kufuor is not vacating his office suite in Jubilee House anytime soon, short any humanly unforeseen circumstances or the commission of any egregious and/or flagitious and a heinous crime of the highest order. And the Aisha Huang Faux-Pas is definitely not one of them. At the worst, it was just a mild public blunder. You see, the “Chinese Madam” was not “imported” into our country by any known key operative of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). Ms. Aisha Huang well appears to have been legally invited into the country to engage in both the sex-trade and Galamsey under the watch and protection of the key operatives of the Rawlings-chaperoned National Democratic Congress (NDC) – (See “Osafo-Maafo Under Fire to Apologize for Galamsey Gaffe” MyJoyOnline.com / Modernghana.com 4/20/19).

As, well, whether Mr. Osafo-Maafo choses to apologize for openly talking about the all-too-common tempering of justice with international diplomacy is pretty much up to the renowned economist and very successful businessman and former Minister of Sports under President Agyekum-Kufuor himself. Needless to say, we were all in the country or paying sedulous attention to the media, when former President Jerry John Rawlings and his former Deputy Defense Minister and longtime General-Secretary of the then-ruling National Democratic Congress strong-armed the Supreme Court of Ghana to have Chairman Rawlings’ eldest daughter, Dr. Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings, commandeer the Klottey-Korle parliamentary seat from the then incumbent, a former Rawlings-appointed Mayor of Tema, on grounds that the old dictator’s favor needed to be called in or cashed in, I forget which. The Justice Ackah-Boafo High Court, if memory serves me accurately, had already found Ms. Rawlings, a non-dues-paying former member of the NDC to be decidedly unqualified to stand for election in the then-upcoming NDC’s parliamentary primary.

Back then, I don’t quite recall Mr. Abdul-Malik Kweku Baako’s ever penning and publishing sheaves of news articles or opinion pieces boldly challenging this blatant and flagrant distortion of Ghanaian law and justice. So, why is the Editor-Publisher of the New Crusading Guide suddenly pretending as if this is the very first time in Ghana’s postcolonial history that politics and diplomacy have been made to trump the rule of law and justice. Indeed, contrary to what Mr. Baako would have the public believe, as diplomatically infelicitous or crude as Mr. Osafo-Maafo’s response to the Worcester townhall-meeting participant may be aptly deemed, nevertheless, what the Senior Minister said to his questioner was the Honest-to-God-Truth. In Ghana, in particular, but the international community at large, the law is constantly being tweaked to unfairly serve the needs and interests of the rich and powerful and the well-connected.

Let us not pretend to be clinically naïve and soberly move on from here, hoping that, the next time around, plainspoken senior citizens like Mr. Osafo-Maafo would have better learned how to publicly address issues like the one presently being discussed. Mr. Baako is also not being fair to have expected Mr. Osafo-Maafo, an astute and expert economist, to have “stuck to the law,” when it is quite clear and obvious that the man may be more comfortable in dealing with such matters from the perspective of his academic and professional training as an economist. Maybe what the Senior Minister ought to have done should have been to call on one of his legal experts to answer any questions from the audience that pertained to the workings of the law in Ghana, vis-à-vis cases like the Aisha Huang Affair.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
April 20, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]