Politicians challenge Ghana’s military junta

Press, 17 February 1978, Page 12

Politicians challenge Ghana’s military junta

By

CAMERON DOUDU,

Accra, in the “Sunday Times,” London

An attempt by Ghana’s military rulers to block any revival of democracy in the country is being challenged by an alliance of former political leaders. They have defiantly begun campaigning against a referendum proposal by - 'neral Kutu Acheampong and his supreme military council in which Ghanaians are be ; asked to say Yes to “union government” — meaning a permanent ban on political parties.

Parties have been banned since Acheampong’s regime took over six years ago. They cause “division and strife,” he says, and he wants to legitimise the ban with a Yes vote two months from now. All the campaign

ing was on his side—until the launching this month of the People’s Movement for Freedom and Justice.

By forming the movement, the challengers are risking arrest. One of their leaders, Komla Gbedema, said that since Acheampong’s supporters were holding referent dum rallies, they too had resolved “to exercise our inalienable right to go into the field to campaign for the opposite views.” Gbedema added: "General Acheampong has stated that some individuals are planning to disrunt the referendum. If any such individuals exist, we are taking this opportunity categorically to dissociate ourselves from them. We therefore wish to

say that we do not expect self-appointed thugs to come and disrupt meetings.” Another movement leader, General Akwasi Afrifa, accused the Acheampong regime of a long list of misdemeanours, including detention without trial, capricious exercise of power and systematic suppression of individual liberties and press freedom.

Afrifa also said: “Ghana now has one of the highest rates of inflation in the world. Only a handful of import licence racketeers, profiteers and exploiters with powerful connections are benefiting from this. “The vast majority of our people are in the grip of permanent shortages of es-

sential commodities — soap, toilet rolls, matches, sugar, milk, cooking oil, baby foods, drugs, engine oil and spare parts. Queues are now the common experience of Ghanaians. Some factories are operating at less than half capacity owing to shor ages of materials and spare parts. Unemployment is rampant.” The strength of feeling against the regime is demonstrated by the fact that it has brought together men who used to be bitterly opposed political rivals. Afrifa was one of the architects of the 1966 coup that deposed the late Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president. Afrifa’s No. 2 is Gbedema, who was Nkrumah’s finance minister. In 1969, when he was seeking power in a general election Gbedem was

reportedly told by Afrifa that he would come to power “over my dead body.” Another associate is Johnny Hansen, an ardent socialist who would have liked to put Afrifa on trial for deposing Nkrumah In condemning the “union government” idea, Afrifa says it would inevitably, lead to dictatorship, converting parliament “into the court of a petty, bossy village chief — rowdy, purposeless, and a mere rubber stamp.” And he says the noparty system could not achieve its ostensible purpose of eliminating cliques, because there would be no way of preventing likeminded members of Parliament from “acting in concert in and out of Parliament.”

Afrifa argues strongly

against having army and police leaders taking'part in the government: “They must confine themselves to their traditional roles of defending the state and ensuring peace and order. Their involvement in politics will surely undermine the efficiency, discipline and integrity of these institutions (army and police).” If the electorate verted against union government, he said, Acheampong should resign and hand over to an interim government that would arrange for a smooth transition to democratic rule.

The regime’s first reaction to the formation of Afrifa’s movement has been a statement accusing him and his colleagues of “breaking faith” with the regime.