THE IMPUDENCE OF PROPAGANDA.

I am a ghanaian and though i may have sympathies towards some political parties, what you are about to read is not an attack on a party but the conduct of some officials within it. i say this because of the current trend that has emerged in the country, where every comment is branded as belonging to one party or the other and innocent citizens are vilified or rewarded by the powers that be. As far as I am concerned, both the two major political parties in our mother are both guilty of so many crimes.

However, believers in the rule of law (constitutionalism) like myself find some conduct unacceptable. When the National Security, which is supposed to uphold and defend the constitution of the republic, blatanly suppresses the human rights of a perceived or alledged criminal, I find that to be unacceptable. The law is expressly clear that you cannot hold a person for more that 48 hours in custody without charging him or her, so the security agencies have no right holding a person beyond that. If ghana were some other domain, they would have received a lot of flak for that. But it is even more unacceptable when a politician of national repute, who speaks for the party in government, comes on air and attempts to rationalise it.

What business did Mr. Quarshigah, the propaganda secretary of the ruling NDC have attempting to address the issue of the arrest of a supposed NPP activist? Is he the new Interior minister? Or perhaps he is the PR of the ministry? That aside, why was he trying to say that the NPP was making the administration of National Security difficult because they were asking or the release of a man who had been kept beyond the constitutionally mandated limits? I mean was he being serious? Really? And then what did he hope to achieve by raising the National Security flag? His conduct raises serious questions which must be addressed.

Firstly, is the government embarking on a series of politically motivated arrests or not? I say this against the background of recent arrests made in the Ya-Na murder case, where only one family has had their kinsmen getting arrested whilst the other family treads in peace. If the Government has no such agenda, then why is it that officials of the ruling party who have no positions in government are the ones defending actions of state security? Or there is no longer a division between the national governance and the ruling party? Mr. Quarshigah's action of attempting to defend this irrationality leaves serious questions about the agenda of his party.

Secondly, it also raises questions of the ruling party's respect for the law. We are still dealing with the fallout of the President's last trip to South africa and whether he obeyed th law in addressing parliament before he left the country. And then right on the heel of that experience, we have this: another blatant disregard of the law. Do our politicians respect the law?

In my opinion, he should apologise immediately. and if he does not, he should know we are watching.