Brazen Impunity

If the Ghana Police Service headquarters management team sought to use a press conference to win public support for their business-killing and infamous raid on the warehouse of Kinapharma, they missed it, attracting rather public opprobrium. The raid, according to them, was informed by a tip-off they received about the presence of narcotic substances in the warehouse. They accordingly descended on the warehouse, tendentiously organizing coverage by a particular media house. There was a hidden intention by whoever was pulling the strings in the security of darkness to cause collateral damage to the economy-boosting pharmaceutical set-up where 800 Ghanaian source their daily bread. We had previously editorialized on this subject but compelled to return to it in this edition, given the controversies it has stirred across the country and beyond. The terrible show has garnered a catalogue of minuses for our local investment climate even as officialdom continues to ape �we are committed to supporting local businesses to grow�. Having organized 14 vehicles, with fuel bought by tax payers including Kinapharma and armed men remunerated from the same source, they landed on the warehouse, and thank God it was a hoax. We would rather they bowed their heads in shame and say to the people of Ghana in general and Kinapharma in particular, �sorry.� Indeed, had this happened in politically-civilized societies, the Police would have apologized profusely. These are places where the type of brazen impunity displayed by the Ghana Police would be unthinkable. Asserting that they owe nobody an apology, to say the least, is most unprofessional of an institution like the Police and it pains to think that this is a reality and not a dream. The allusion to a tip-off by the Police raises pertinent questions, answers to which might not be forthcoming. Genuine answers to the questions below can do the integrity of the institution a lot of good. In the absence of this however, most Ghanaians and others outside the country who have followed the unfolding events can only draw their conclusions, negatives as they are. Who gave the tip-off? Was the tip-off subjected to due professional scrutiny? Was it from inside? Were the Police not misled by a cynic? Who was responsible for the �order from above� as disclosed by the policemen merely carrying the directive? Could it be the IGP? Or the Minister of the Interior? Or even the President himself? Could it have been the Chairman of the Police Council or the National Security Coordinator? Hmm! We should be mindful about such impunity which worldwide resonation does our country no good at this time that we are on the threshold of joining the league of oil producers. We are not pretending not to know the constitutional responsibilities of the Police as a critical institution of state. All we demand of the organization is for the personnel therein to discharge their responsibilities within the confines of the law. Politicians who have been given the state�s management in trust for the next three years should do this without turning the Police Service they met into a terrorist machine to intimidate the citizenry. That was a shameful press conference by the police, adding more pain to the sore they inflicted on not only Kinapharma, but the whole country. But for the apprehension of asking for too much, we would have asked for heads to roll at the Police headquarters. We shall definitely come back to this subject again.