The wind of political instability for sometime now has been blowing across the continent, especially the West African Sub-region.
Countries like Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea, Niger and Guinea Bissau have already come under the scourge of destabilising force of this political turmoil with the afore mentioned countries suffering the toppling of their democratically elected governments toppled by the military.
In a bid to justify their unconstitutional act, these soldiers and their acolytes, cite economic hardships and mismanagement as the basis for ousting their elected leaders from office.
The wave of these occurrences ordinarily, should have raised concerns for all lovers of democracy.
However, in Ghana the situation which ordinarily should have led to condemnation have rather elicited very worrying comments, statements, presentations and social media posts all with the aim of inciting same here.
The worrying aspect of this is that some of the persons behind these comments are highly placed persons in society and persons who should know better.
Oliver Barker Vormawor, convener of the #fixthecountry movement recently threatened to stage a coup himself, should the government go ahead and pass the proposed e-levy bill.
He even went ahead to insult the military for failing to take a cue from their counterparts in the Sub-region.
Similarly, a Professor of law, and a former executive secretary to former President John Mahama, Raymond Atuguba rather surprisingly, has also re-echoed same sentiments basing his argument on the prevailing economic conditions in the country.
These comments, are not only intended to instigate and prepare the minds of the populace, but backward and treasonable, and ought to be taken seriously by the National Security.
The recent outburst of Prof. Raymond Atuguba in particular cannot be taken lying low because the very economic conditions based on which he makes his assertion prevailed under the government in which he served if not worst.
Under their watch, many businesses collapsed as a result of the unprecedented power outages popularly known as dumsor that threw many into unemployment.
It is therefore quite disturbing that today, the likes of Prof. Raymond Atuguba believes that the current economic challenges should warrant a coup and yet fails to remind themselves of the abysmal performance of the immediate past NDC government of which he was a cabinet member.
Prof Atuguba and his kind’s assertions smack of political ventriloquism and must be condemned by well meaning Ghanaians. People had issues with how his(Atuguba) party the NDC government handled the economy but did not call for coup, Ghanaians rather waited for the constitutional four year mandate to mature and voted them out through the ballot box and not the barrel of the gun.
As a university scholar in the field of law and legal education, he ought to know better and be the last person to advocate for a coup as an alternative to constitutional governance.
Rather interestingly and shockingly ,in the foregoing melee is the loud silence of the civil society organizations (CSOs) and their think tanks in the country, who have been critical of government on many fronts on the governance.
These CSOs very often are vociferous in their condemnation of government or government actors, yet have remained conspicuously absent with their voices in relation to the distasteful presentation by Prof. Atuguba.
Ghana belongs to all Ghanaians and those comments by sections of the populace, especially those entrusted with responsibility aimed at psyching the minds of people into causing chaos in the country, should be a matter of serious concern to all.
It appears that, those fanning the coup sentiments and hoping for any form of pandemonium to befall this country, tend to forget that, they could also be negatively affected and targeted when there is a coup d’etat.
By: Prince Adjei – Guy Gee
