Who Is Behind Kweku Baako’s Foolhardiness?

Only FOOLHARDINESS will make a man who styles himself a journalist to reproduce in his newspaper caution statements written by an accused person after he was arrested by the police and at a time trial on the matter is ongoing at the courts.

That is the lot of the editor of the New Crusading Guide, Kweku Baako Jnr. Perhaps, he thinks the world will applaud him for re-producing in his pages documents that, at least for now, cannot and should not be made public.

Yesterday’s issue of his newspaper, The New Crusading Guide, ran the bold banner headline WOYOME’S CASE AGAINST THE STATE. Under it, he quotes a part of the statement businessman, Alfred Woyome, wrote in his caution statement to the police after his arrest in the ongoing CAN 2008 Judgment debt saga. The part quoted read “…Ample evidence existed that political executives were dealing with me and I did not conceal any document or information from them. The AG with eyes wide open signed settlement Agreement.”

Then on page 2 of the paper, Kweku Baako published the Caution Statement of Alfred Woyome (in Alfred’s own handwriting together with details that are not meant for public consumption.

By this singular act, Kweku Baako has undermined the Ghana Police Service because ordinary citizens will no longer feel they can trust the police to keep their Caution Statements out of public domain, at least until trial begins at the courts. Secondly, Kweku Baako’s publication is a clear case of being contemptuous of court because it clearly interferes with the trial going on currently involving Alfred Woyome.

Thirdly, in publishing this document, he made no attempt to protect the personal profile of Mr. Woyome. The businessman’s Post Office address number as well as his mobile phone number was displayed with impunity. Yesterday, a source close to Alfred Woyome told the Daily Post that the publication of his mobile phone number in the New Crusading Guide has resulted in people from all walks of life calling him to insult and threaten him.

Finally, Kweku Baako, in pursuit of his parochial agenda, decided not to publish parts of the statement that fingers some NPP top guns as those who really have caused fianancial loss to the state in the whole saga.

When Daily Post drew the attention of the police to the publication, a senior officer, who was besides himself with anger, said the Police Service is instituting investigations into how police reports found their way into Kweku Baako’s hands though he was confident the leakage was not from his outfit.

He told the paper that on completion of its investigative work into the CAN 2008 judgement debt saga, the CID handed over its report together with the statements of the accused person to the Attorney-General’s Department.

Madam Cynthia Lamptey was specifically mentioned as the one who received the documents from the police.

Incidentally, the said Cynthia Lamptey, who is leading the prosecution in the Woyome trial is the wife of Barimah Awuah, an executive member of the NPP. This definitely raises question.

While accusing fingers point at the AG’s department, in what clearly is an attempt to cover his tracks and that of his collaborators, Kweku Baako begins the story or this matter by trying to deceive the public about where he got the document from. He writes.

“The New Crusading Guide’s Special Investigative Team recently intercepted within the corridors of the Criminal Investigative Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service, several caution statements given by Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome to police CID investigative team in the wake of his first arrest…Our police sources have further intimated that Mr. Woyome has not altered or changed his previous statements…”

Clearly, this is an infantile attempt to cover his tracks. Kweku Baako names the police CID as his source knowing very well that no journalist will name his source. He is behaving like a child, who without being asked the source of the money he has stolen, tells anyone who has cares to listen how he ‘genuinely’ got his money.

The publication by The New Crusading Guide is not only reckless but an affront to the rule of law in this country and by extension, democracy. But, what gives the Editor the effrontery to be so reckless?

Ever since the Alfred Woyome case broke out, Kweku Baako has been publishing documents he does not understand. Obviously, the source of his FOOLHARDINESS is either the officials of the Attorney-General’s Department (NPP apparatchiks) who smuggle document to him or the faceless people in the Mills government who started it all by engineering the whole saga just to settle personal scores with Alfred Woyome.