The Ghanaian Politics; The Story of Ato Kwamena Dadzie And The Ghanaian Times Editor

The Ghanaian public has never ceased to amaze me when it comes to matters of urgency, need and importance. All that we have wasted our years after Dr. Kwame Nkrumah is on trivial issues. We are quick at making politics out of any issue even if it will go against our development process. For selfish personal interests we will rather watch the country go down into the pit than come together to build a better place for generations yet to come.

Two such cases that have been unduly politicized are the Ato Kwamena Dadzie and the editor of Ghanaian Times’ unprofessional and unethical conduct. To me, we have unnecessarily tried to make political capital out of these ‘stupid’ cases.

Ato Kwamena Dadzie an acting news editor at Joy FM a reputable radio station in the country is called by the police to answer some questions about the news they put out that executives of Ghana Real Estate Developers Association (GREDA) suffered death threats from the government that is why they withdrew their earlier resentment about the STX Housing deal.

In Ghana we have all accepted death threats to be a crime so what is wrong in the police trying to find the substance behind the allegations Joy Fm put out. In fact the government drew the attention of the radio station to the flaws in the news and asked them to withdraw it and apologize because executives of GREDA had come out to publicly deny such threats.

Is it not normal and sensible to do a humble thing by withdrawing your story for the least even if you cannot apologize yet they continued to broadcast the story the whole day and even putting it online on their website? For the sake of common judgement I thought people will understand the police but for political interests some people and groups in the name of freedom of expression (without responsibility) have gone to the defense of this editor even to the extent of saying that the government (not the police) wants to prosecute Ato because he has refused to reveal his sources. Now we all know this is not true.

Ato’s source may have been right but immediately the GREDA (those whom he claimed were been threatened) denied the story he had no authority again to broadcast the story. And when he was called to defend his story he could not even when he was asked to specifically give the names of those who were been threatened for protection.

The other case is about the Ghanaian Times editor who reported that armed robbers had taken siege of five police stations in the central region. Over here we are talking about the responsibilities of the police been in question and when they called the editor to seek more insight into the matter some sections of the Ghanaian public are claiming that the government is undermining freedom of speech and expression as if the editor reported about the president or his ministers.

If we really want to strengthen institutions this is not the way to go. We should allow the police to carry out their duties because for the least I know about the law the police has the right to question or seek more information into a story of a journalist. We should not always be blaming the government (though it is sometimes necessary) for the troubles of our institutions.

Let us rather jointly reach a consensus for the sake of Ghana, the country our forefathers fought to free instead of deeply polarizing our economically challenged communities.