President John Mahama
Ghanaians had another opportunity to assess the quality of the state’s management of coercive power through investigative bodies under the presidency of Commander-in-Chief John Dramani Mahama a few days ago.
The Director of Communications in the Office of the Flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dennis Miracles Aboagye, was Rambo-style arrested when he touched down from a foreign trip under a bizarre ‘Stop Order’. Label it ‘Stop Order Upside Down’ and you have not erred.
Why would a ‘Stop Order’ be issued when the subject is outside the jurisdiction of the country?
Why would such a noisy arrest method be carried out on a person who has already had a conversation with investigators at Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) earlier and before his trip abroad?
So far what Ghanaians are being served in terms of governance continues to be what they observed in the aftermath of the most foul of coups in the country – the so-called 1979 revolution.
For a political party birthed from a junta, these Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) traits should not surprise scholars of Ghana’s contemporary history.
These traits of violence are endemic to the National Democratic Congress (NDC). The President once boasted that when it comes to violence, no other party parallels the NDC. He is right as events being exuded show – suspected torture of persons being held for political comments is now being discussed by many Ghanaians.
EOCO was established by law to serve a good cause, but under the current political dispensation in the country, the Office’s Gestapo-style operation has earned for it and the government an unenviable notoriety.
Although Miracles is now home after weathering one of the typical punishing bail conditions, his arrest and detention for three days leaves a dent on the image of the government.
It is important to take another look at the objective of ‘Stop Order’ – meant to prevent a suspect in which the state has an interest from fleeing jurisdiction.
In the case of Miracles, he was stopped only when he was returning home.
We can argue that the subject cannot be a flight risk given his prominence on the political space and his position in the Office of the former Vice President.
The political leverage which EOCO and the government seeks to achieve from the deliberately noisy arrest method have fled through the window, leaving behind a further injured image for the President and his assigns; so avoidable when the subject could have simply been invited for a parley as happened earlier.
He wants to contest for the position of Communications Director of the NPP and must have his reputation dented by EOCO before he takes the first critical steps. This state investigative agency is on a mission to ‘destroy’, and with this fact already known, the goal is moribund.
We cannot be supporters of those who breach the laws of the land; we would however shout out the names of those who use the transient power at their disposal to overreach the state’s coercive power.
This Gestapo-tactics would not stop the subject and other Ghanaians from exposing the instances of bad governance of the NDC.
The NDC administration is mired in a coup mentality which is doing our democracy more damage than good.
EOCO is on overdrive. Who is the next politically-exposed person to be Rambo-style arrested?
