JJ Rawlings set to boom today
Today at the Tamale Police Park, the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) together with its founder, former President Rawlings, are expected to go frenzy in the celebration of the 31st anniversary of the June 4, 1979 uprising.
And despite the Supreme Court ban on the public celebration of the day, the government party is set to remind Ghanaians publicly about the gruesome execution of some three former heads of states and five other former government officials with pomp and pageantry.
The three former Heads of States were Generals Akwasi Amankwaah Afrifa, Ignatius Kutu Acheampong and Frederick William Kwesi Akuffo.
The other officials included Lt General Emmanuel Kwesi Utaka, former Border Guards Commander; Major General Robert Ebenezer Abbossey Kotei, former Army Commander; Major General George Yaw Boakye, former Air Force Commander; Real Admiral Joy Komla Amedume, the former Navy Commander and Colonel Roger Feli, a former Commissioner of Foreign Affairs.
The president himself has set the tone to re-legitimize the outlawed event.
The president’s position on the event clearly underscores the fact that June 4 is a major political event on the NDC calendar.
He told a section of the press that the significance of the June 4 uprising, the 31st December revolution go beyond individuals and remind such individuals of accountability in public office.
Former President Rawlings whose zeal for the celebration of June 4 in the past showed un-repentance stoicism for the day also underscored the importance of the event by drawing analogy of the relevance of the day with a popular verse in the bible.
He told the press that “What June 4, 1979 did to this country was like what Jesus Christ did when He saw gamblers, robbers and thieves misbehaving in His Father’s temple”, adding that freedom without justice is like a kite in the air without rope to hold it; it will not fly”.
Perhaps the only difference in today’s anniversary as compared to what pertained in the first NDC regime of Rawlings is that the day is no more a statutory public holiday.
Yet all other attractions had been observed publicly in the days preceding today’s event.
There had been public announcements and advertisements in state and other private media extolling the virtues of the events and heralding activities being planned for the day.
Other cadres and core adherents of June 4 have been meeting and planning for the occasion.
There are other extremely partisan NDC paraphernalia like T-shirts, badges, cups, caps and umbrellas embossed with June 4 inscriptions to be distributed to party youth and other supporters who are expected to throng the Tamale police park.
Before the leadership of the NDC and former President Rawlings are airlifted to Tamale for the celebration, they will lay wreath on behalf of martyrs and other casualties of the June 4 uprising at the Flagstaff house in Accra.
The former president will be inaugurating the youth wing of the June 4 uprising and, according to credible information, members of the group are on all card-bearing members of the NDC some of whom are members of the youth forum of the NDC.
It is expected that other youth who got wind that members of the movement are likely to be offered jobs are queuing up to be members of the new June 4 youth organisation.
However, certain actions exhibited by the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, the junta which was established to run the country after the June 4 coup suggest that the laudable principles of the day were still-born. And the chief culprit in that melodrama was its former Chairman, Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings.
He broke a self-recognissance rule that suggested that the AFRC was supposed to be the coup that was to put an end to all military interventions in the country.
After some 27 months of handing over to the Limann administration of the People’s National Party (PNP), Rawlings toppled the regime to establish the revolutionary Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) which only succeeded with the continued excesses of the AFRC.
That singular move by Rawlings set a seething rage amongst other AFRC members who did not only see Rawlings as a traitor but also the one to have broken the sanctity of the covenant that June 4 entered into with the Ghanaian people to clean the stables of the military in order to consign them permanently to the barracks.
June 4 stalwarts like Major Boakye Djan who felt betrayed by Rawlings’ unilateral betrayer attempted to ostracize Rawlings from their conscious club; but had to succumb to the popular pressure mounted by civil society to take collective responsibility of the Rawlings action.
And so no matter how Boakye Djan and his cohorts try to distance themselves from the Rawlings action of 31st December, 1981, they are always cited as guilty as Rawlings for perhaps not fighting to restore the collective decision and will of the June 4 principles.
Some of the June 4 members themselves have been accused of defeating the principles of the day even when they were serving in capacities as governors of the country.
That deduction was premised on the decision by some of the AFRC members to access a Ghana government loan facility – the Chiavelli loan without paying back.
The decision to access the loan was considered nothing compared to the much touted probity and accountability slogan that the occasion vibrated in every parts of the country and at best only an enactment of the corrupt practices of the senior military officers who were executed by the AFRC.
Such self-conceitedness on the part of Rawlings and his colleagues in the AFRC have contributed to contrived inherent contradiction of June 4 as a principled day worth celebrating and therefore any attempt by Rawlings to re-live the occasion is seen as a purely Rawlings event to console himself for extricating himself from the jaws of death to the elevation as head of state.
As the chief architect of the May 15th uprising, Rawlings’ fate in the abortive coup was to be determined on June 4, 1979 and from all indications he was either to die or sentenced for life imprisonment for causing treason.
But fate had its own way of determining the cause of history and so by providence Rawlings was released from prison custody to be part of the successful June 4 uprising and later became the leader of the junta.
With the principles of June 4 undermined by the high priest and his disciples, the celebration of the event has lost its luster and instead replaced with the pain and excesses that were unleashed on Ghanaians.
