‘Rawlings’ integrity Next to only Nkrumah’

Story: Richmond KEELSON

The first Public Prosecutor, Martin Alamisi Kaiser Amidu has assumed a cult controversial figure with his public utterances over the years and he is famed for saying things as they are, devoid of scratching the surface as has been the case with many of our public figures.

In one of his many epistles shared within the public domain, Martin Amidu daringly exposed many corrupt practices in the infamous Ayapa Royalties deal, where he referred to many top government officials, including the President of the Republic as complicit in the many inherent malpractices he discovered, by virtue of his position as the Public Prosecutor (PS).

Martin has yet again stirred another controversy in his memoriam tribute to the former Ghanaian President Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings. A year on after his demise, Martin Amidu, who is also a former Attorney General has stated that the former President’s integrity is next only to the first President of Ghana, the Osagyefo, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.

Since his death last year, the public debate has been how Ghanaians remember the former Ghanaian Head of State and President, Flt Lt. Jerry John Rawlings. Is it about his stoical and defiant character which saw him breach then established Military order in his abortive May 15^th mutiny?

Or his daring attitude of doing perhaps the unthinkable within the Ghanaian political structure by endorsing the execution of three military Heads of State in his June 4^th uprising or the penchant to get into the gutters to set an example for environmental cleanliness? Or his unholy fight with his sitting Vice President on December 28^th, 1995?

All these are attributes of Mr. Rawlings that anytime they come up, they tend to divide the country, depending on which side of the political one is arguing from. Despite the inherent controversies that Rawlings’ character assessment exudes, Martin Amidu believes Rawlings was an epitome of the highest form of integrity and honour.

“In my lived experience, there is no Ghanaian Head of Government or Head of State who can compare with the late Comrade Chairman and President Emeritus Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings in terms of the exhibition of the highest degree of integrity and honour in the management of the public affair of this country,” Martin wrote in his memoriam.

According to Martin Amidu, these were rare character traits that did for the common good of ordinary Ghanaians since independence on March 6^th, 1957 and can only be surpassed perhaps, by the Osagyefo, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.

But in terms of Rawlings’ “management skills in all facets of our governance as Head of State, including an in-depth understanding of the statecraft of our national and international relations” Martin Amidu argues, “the life of the late President Emeritus Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings compares in our circumstances only to the late statesman and British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill.”

According to Martin Amidu, although like Churchill, Rawlings “did not have all those highfalutin certificates or university or college degrees, it will take this country a long time for another President who understands the ordinary Ghanaian psyche and empathizes truly with his compatriots to emerge to salvage our decaying democratic situation under the constitution.”

Although, he admitted that “…Rawlings like all of us was a human being: he naturally had weaknesses, and some of the actions taken under his leadership to restore sanity and dignity of our decadent political system may have hurt others and sometimes fatally; within the dialectics of the unity or identity of opposites in nature and man, Jerry John Rawlings’ integrity and honour in this life far outweighed any human weaknesses he had.”

In the estimation of the former Attorney General “The facts are evidently demonstrated by the extent to which those who had exhibited disdain to his regimes when he was in office as Ghana’s Head of State turned round to opportunistically assimilate and integrate his personality and successes into their regimes.”

Mr. Amidu noted that his tribute to Rawlings would only serve it useful purpose “when those committed cadres who started with him (Rawlings) under the 4^th June, and 31^st December Revolutions, and served in his Governments under the Fourth Republican Constitution remember all the times that part of the work we started together until his demise on 12^th November 2020, remains unaccomplished.”

He reminded his cadre group of how several reverses have taken place since 7^th January 2001 against the interest of the ordinary people of Ghana as enshrined under the 1992 constitution and contended “This country cannot make any meaningful progress in the absence of a strict commitment to probity and accountability, and transparency in governance as mandated by the 1992 Constitution that the late President Rawlings bequeathed this nation.”