Posted: Daily Guide | Monday, 21 February 2011
www.dailyguideghana.com
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) believes that President Mills and his National Democratic Congress (NDC) government have not been telling Ghanaians the truth about the fight against the drugs’ trade in the country.
In the ‘state of the nation’ address last week, President Mills said his government had acquitted itself very well two years after declaring war on the drugs’ trade in the country, noting “we will not relent in our fight against the narcotic trade and I believe (that) the majority of Ghanaians are happy that these days they don’t wake up to daily stories of cocaine here, cocaine there, cocaine everywhere.”
But Buabeng-Asamoa, who is a deputy Communications Director of the party, says the President appeared to project the fight against drug trafficking through Ghana as a political battle against the NPP.
He made these comments when he appeared on Joy FMs news analysis programme ‘Newsfile’, alleging that the Mills administration has been deliberately suppressing information about drug arrests for political purposes.
Mr Buabeng-Asamoa, lawyer, quoted paragraphs 841 of the 2011 budget statement which stated “…the Board (NACOB) recorded 32 cases of narcotic drugs, arrested 38 culprits and seized a total of 483.6 kilograms of various narcotic drugs” to support his claim, noting that “these seizures were in 2010 alone and could be the tip of the iceberg.”
He therefore asked “where are the 483.6 kilograms of drugs?” since according to Mr Asamoa, the NPP government passed two very important laws in the fight against drug traffickers which the NDC government seemed to have ignored.
“Because of influence, there is a suspicion that cocaine suspects on bail either run away or bribe their way.
When the law was passed under then Attorney-General Joe Ghartey, 20 suspects were convicted in 2 months. It is alleged that against this law, the prosecution is said to have demanded bail”, he stated.
According to him, another law was passed which made it obligatory for cocaine to be destroyed as soon as it was seized after a sample had been shown to the court.
That was also to avoid the situation where the exhibits could get missing being transported to court daily for hearings, asking “so has the government destroyed the 483.6 kilos of cocaine?”
Other panelists on the programme bemoaned the fact that drug cases and arrests were not being reported in the media thus giving the impression that the NDC had created that since it came to power the drug trade had suddenly stopped.
Editor-in-Chief of the ‘New Crusading Guide’ Abdul Malik Kwaku Baako Jnr indicated that if the government continued to play politics with sensitive issues such as that of drug control, then the fight against the menace would not be successful.
Between 1994 and 1999, Kwaku Baako alleged that over 300 cases of cocaine-related drug issues were not clearly dealt with, an indictment on the NDC.
He stressed the need for the issue of cocaine to be dealt with in a nationalistic manner so that everybody would be involved.
Otherwise, he said the NDC’s attempt to paint NPP black would only worsen the problems of enforcement.
Whilst welcoming the President’s announcement of his decision to re-open investigations into the infamous MV Benjamin cocaine case in which 77 parcels of the drug got missing from a vessel, he said it was sad that the President seemed misinformed that the suspects in that case had been tried, convicted and jailed.