We Need Both Justice And Electoral Victory

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
July 1, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]

I often like to believe that the leaders of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) have greater moral credibility than their counterparts of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC). And so I was a little taken aback to hear NPP flagbearer Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo challenge party members to work assiduously towards a 2016 electoral victory as a means of "avenging the death of Adams Mahama," the slain former Upper-East NPP regional chairman (See "Let's Win 2016 To 'Avenge' Mahama's Death - Akufo-Addo" Citifmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 6/8/15).

I hope this kind of rhetorical pep-talk does not point to a decision by the NPP's national leadership to sweep justice under the rug, with the "gentlemanly" understanding that Ghanaians are a people with extremely short memory; and that in time, both the death of Mr. Mahama and his cold-blooded killers and the latter's masterminds will be forgotten, even as the party returned to business as usual. That would be a grievous mistake which party leaders, including Nana Akufo-Addo, would live to regret. First of all, the brutal assassination of Mr. Mahama was orchestrated by party insiders, at least according to the available police and media reports; and so the very notion of "avenging" his death via a mere electoral victory pointedly lacks logic. It makes sense, however, when such vengeance, or poetic justice, as adumbrated by Nana Akufo-Addo, is coupled with the fact that Mr. Mahama was widely known to be an indefatigable promoter of the triumphal cause of the NPP.

I am making the foregoing observation because we have just learned that the two suspects, so far arrested and charged with the murder of Mr. Mahama, are being tried in the wrong court. We are told that since the suspects were transferred from Bolgatanga, the Upper-East's regional capital where the crime was allegedly committed, to our nation's capital of Accra, the case ought to have been referred to the high court for trial. We are also apprised of the fact that circuit courts have only local jurisdiction. The implication here is that the alleged culprits could be let off the hook on technical grounds, rather then the strength of evidence adduced against them. If the preceding interpretation has validity, then it goes without saying that the proper thing to do ought to be to promptly have the case moved to back to either Bolgatanga or transferred to an Accra high court, wherever the most dispassionate administration of justice can be guaranteed.

At the ADUA, or final funeral rites for Mr. Mahama in May, the NPP's 2016 presidential candidate was reported to have indicated that police investigators appeared to be "doing a good job, and we expect them to continue and not be influenced in any way by political pressure of any sort." We must quickly point out that the foregoing statement was made at least a month ago. But so far, unfortunately, not much else has been publicly disclosed by either police investigators or the communications directorate of the New Patriotic Party. Too many political killings have occurred in both major parties which were not satisfactorily resolved. We hope Mr. Mahama's death will not go the way of those who suffered and lost their lives before the former Upper-East's NPP cahirman. For that would make public-service activism of the sort in which Mr. Mahama was intensely engaged seem thankless and decidedly unattractive.

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