Prof. Oquaye condemns celebration of June 4

Story: Donald Ato Dapatem
THE Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Professor Mike Oquaye has described the celebration of the June 4 coup as an insensitivity on the part of those who instituted it to the people who lost their lives, relatives, loved ones and property during the period.
He said the celebration also made useless the indemnity clause that were put into the 1992 constitution for the coup makers, arguing that “if they believed what they did was right and wanted to celebrate it, why did they call for the indemnity clause”.
Prof. Oquaye who was delivering a key note address at a public lecture by the Ga-Dangme Forward Movement in Accra on Tuesday, said such celebrations, “hurt the feelings of Ghanaians and therefore must not go on”.
The event was on the theme: “Revolutionary Politics in Ghana”.
He noted that people with a “coup mentality” did not believe in the due process of law and also tended to experiment with the life of the nation.
Prof. Oquaye said such nation wreckers hid behind fanny names like revolution, enrich themselves and kill innocent people under the guise of accountability.
He stated that in the long run, such recalcitrant nation wreckers took advantage of the lack of accountability process to loot the nation’s covers and left the people in abject poverty.
Prof. Oquaye, therefore, called on Ghanaians to ensure that such characters who, in order to satisfy their parochial interest, took up arms and overthrew governments did not rear their ugly heads again.
The legislator said as far back as the year 2000,then President Rawlings acknowledged in his last State of the Nation address to Parliament that corruption was rife in Ghana and called on the World Bank to undertake a diagnostic study of the problem to help find a concrete way of ameliorating the problem.
Prof. Oquaye said in its fulfilment to the promise of fighting corruption, the Kufuor Administration put in policies such as the Procurement Act and other administrative procedures as well as the abolishing of the Criminal Libel Law.
He challenged President Mills to refrain from the rhetoric of fighting corruption and come out with any workable policy that would improve the system.
In his welcoming address, a leading member of the Movement, Mr Emmanuel Adjei-Boye stated that all the military upheavals that resulted in the over throw of governments affected the peace and stability of the country in general and the people of Accra in particular.
He said in most cases, apart from the trauma that the people in the region went through, its negative impact was great.
Mr Adjei-Boye mentioned some of the soldiers who were killed during such coup as General Odartey Wellington and General R.E.A. Kotei as well as the destruction of the Makola market which significantly affected the livelihood of the people.
“As if these are not enough, some political parties which lack vision and direction have made it their stock in trade to exploit our people with dangerous phenomenon of ethno-centric politics.” he added.