First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
The foregone is a 1946 German Lutheran Church pastor and theologian’s post-war confessional prosaic rendition about the cost of not acting or speaking against dictatorship and abuse of power as it occurred in Germany under the Nazis.
This is what is playing out in Ghana today.
Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller’s opposition to Nazism earned him time in a concentration camp.
When the Gestapo, Nazi Secret Police, were arresting those suspected of not being supportive of Adolf Hitler, he did not speak out until he too was whisked away to a concentration camp where he survived execution.
Within three months of being at the throttles of state, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has turned to extra-judicial actions which for now are yet to be condemned by the church, mosques, civil society organisations and the media.
If the silence is because the new government is being allowed to enjoy a honeymoon, this in our opinion is dangerous and reckless.
Political honeymooning excludes abuse of power. The spectacle of weapon-wielding men hiding behind balaclavas in a democracy is not in tune with a law ruled society.
Descending upon the residence of a former Governor of the country’s apex bank as played out recently is a sad testament about how we have shrunk in democracy ranking within three months into this NDC government.
The man in charge of National Security Operations at the National Security Secretariat and whose stock-in-trade is this reckless and outmoded method of wreaking fear and panic should be stopped by his hirers.
Only criminally-minded persons will storm the residence of another citizen, disable the CCTV camera, demand keys to a cash vault and make away with the CCTV’s remote control. That was what played out at the residence of the former Bank of Ghana (BoG) Governor, a despicable development requiring all cherishers of democracy and the rule of law to speak up against.
A similar scenario occurred at the residence of the former Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta, about which legal action has been announced.
We pray that the abduction and murder of three high court judges and a retired Army Major as it took place under the forebear of the NDC is not replicated, because after all the ruling party is a product of the bloody uprising dubbed a revolution.
The government of President John Mahama is an intolerant one. It is ironic that having hired persons to unleash a reign of verbal terrorism upon the government of the then President Akufo-Addo and his person without sanctions, those behind the invectives are unable to absorb this small fire.
Okatakyie Afrifa of the ‘For The Records’ fame endured a dose of NDC version of Gestapo when National Security operatives under the command of Richard Jakpa arrested him when he was returning from GIMPA.
His critiques of government actions and inactions are bereft of the kind of stings and even vitriolic which the NDC-engaged hatchet men were unleashing on their political opponents.
One of such verbal mercenaries was in the country recently and the state courtesies he enjoyed pointed at the existing relationship between him and the then opposition and now government.
Culture of silence? Never again.