Ghana: Rawlings decries persecution of Morsi

Former Ghananian President, Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings has decried the seeming unending crisis in Egypt and is urging an alliance of global voices to stop what he says is the unfair treatment of deposed President Mohammed Morsi.

The former President also described Robert Mugabe’s victory in the Zimbabwe presidential and parliamentary elections as a victory for African patriotism.

Deposed President Morsi is being held by the military authorities who toppled his democratically elected administration on July 3 and placed him under investigations for alleged murder and conspiracy with Hamas during Egypt’s 2011 revolution.

But speaking exclusively to the Daily Graphic in Accra last Thursday, former President Rawlings said the charge against Morsi was a mere excuse. What for him was even more worrying was the deafening silence of world leaders against what is obviously a display of impunity against popular choice.

“That charge is incredible. They simply want to get him out of the way. As we say, you give a dog a bad name to hang it. That is exactly what is going on.”

He said for him, the security forces’ shooting to death of scores of supporters protesting Morsi’s removal, in the full glare of TV cameras proved more murderous.

President Rawlings said through that violent action in the Tahrir Square on July 7, the deposed president might have been naïve for looking on oblivious to how the state machinery was being used to discredit his government and undermine the revolution.

“The machinery had clearly regained their shaken confidence under his own presidency by that action.”

He said he did not see how the revolution would survive with such machinery intact and still in place.

“Is it any wonder that the regime would shamefully call him a murderer and a spy? Morsi should have embraced the revolution but he made a mistake by relying heavily on the Brotherhood when he could have relied on the two feet that the revolution provided,” he said.

President Rawlings said the military regime needed not to look further than its own security and intelligence machinery to find the spies and the murderers.

“The whole world saw on television screens the firing into the backs of fleeing demonstrators and the brutal and uncivilised manner women were punched and kicked in the streets. It was as shocking as what the South African security personnel did to the miners.

“They cannot be a corrective regime if they are going to slap such false charges against President Morsi. Calling the deposed President a murderer and a spy is atrocious,” he said.

President Rawlings said ailing former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s regime had had adequate time to create that cold-blooded machinery to prop up the survival of his regime, and said the United States has not helped either by directly financing a military establishment knowing very well it could become a government within a government as they have done in Pakistan and other places.

Thousands of supporters of the ousted President are defying a new warning from the military-backed cabinet to end a month-long sit-in protest in Cairo, while the police have also been ordered to end protests.

Reacting to the announcement of the election results in Zimbabwe, the former Ghanaian leader said: “Mugabe the bold patriot has won again. His victory if it was free and fair is a victory for African patriotism.”

He described Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s comments on the just-ended elections in Zimbabwe as ‘a premeditated one’. Tsvangirai has described the election as a farce and a sham but Mugabe reportedly won by a comfortable majority in both the presidential and parliamentary contests.

Report by Isaac Yeboah/Ghana for graphic.com.gh