
PAUL ADOM OTCHERE IS A JOURNALIST AND NOT A JUDGE IN A CRIMINAL Trial.
I’ve been monitoring and reading how people are attacking Mr. Paul Adom Otchere of Metropolitan Television over a programme he did a few days ago. Their sole reason is that, Paul advised Dr. Zenator Rawlings to be circumspect the next time she is making an allegation against the system during a national/international crisis like COVID 19. The summary of all that he said was that, Dr. Zenator is a member of parliament and the daughter of the Rawlingses, and that she was born into a privileged family. These three reasons as pointed out by Paul are quite unassailable and his attackers know that.
Paul was critical of her. He said Dr. Zenator ought to back her allegations, that the government was distributing food to people in her constituency on partisan lines with verifiable facts and hard-core evidence. To Paul and many others, what she said on TV had the proclivity to derail the efforts of the system and could get people despondent and that could lead to another national catastrophe at the time that we’re grappling with the invincible and invisible coronavirus.
Interestingly, those who launched verbal war against Paul as well as those who are cutting his throat on social media are the ardent supporters of Kelvin Tailor and his loud silence media. They call Kelvin an intelligent man, a bold Ghanaian etc for his incessant insults on president Akufo Addo, members of parliament on the NPP side and the leadership of the NPP.
They got excited and started sharing his Facebook live show with glee, when he said the president, Nana Ado Danquah Akufo-Addo had tested positive to coronavirus. As carelessly as he said it, they flooded his commentary box with praises. He calls the president and his ministers criminals all the time without ever speaking to any of them. Kelvin Tailor we’re told, is also a journalist. So which principle are people espousing now? It’s strange that they are drenching in the pool of double standards.
The same people hail Mr. Tailor to high heavens because they think president Akufo Ado, his ministers and members of the NPP are second class citizens and don’t deserve respect.
People are roasting Paul because, for them, he who alleges must prove and so Paul ought to interview Dr. Zenator. What they don’t avert their minds to, is that, Paul isn’t a judge and didn’t sit in a court room on a criminal case to pass verdict without hearing from Zenator in which case he would’ve been violating one of the principles of natural justice. He sat in the studios of Metropolitan Television and did an editorial of a news item that had hijacked the airwaves and seized social media.
It is my examined view that, Dr. Zenator can sue Paul if she feels defamed by what Paul did against her, anything sort of which is a red herring as far as I am concern. If people can critique/criticise the sitting president, JJ Rawlings-Dr. Zenator’s father and Kuffour, what makes anyone think that she’s beyond reproach?
There are people who are also of the view that Paul oughtn’t do his programme the way he did it because the MP is a woman. Just that? So women should be allowed to lie in our republic? That position is a weak call and unsustainable because women are virtuous people and Dr. Zenator should be encouraged to be virtuous too and not be allowed to lie in the name of being a woman.
May I remind those who are singing the gender song and ask them how they reckon the attitude of the minority members of parliament appealed to their collective conscience, when they shamefully brandished placards with the inscription “bloody widow”, when Mrs. Agyarko won the AWW bye election and went to the august house of parliament the first day. Is paul suppose to be more Honorable than the elected representatives of the people in parliament? What did they think they were doing to psychology and sensibilities of Mrs Agyarko and her fellow women of Ghana of which Dr. Senator is part? Strangely, those who think all hell should break loose because Paul was critical of the conduct of the MP were those who became the back up singers of that unfortunate spectacle in our parliamentary history. I think people should be told to eschew hypocrisy in this country.
For me, Paul did his work as a journalist because not even those who launched vitriols against him have shown evidence that, the minister/government shared food to people after they’d shown their NPP membership cards.
COVID 19 is supposed to be our common enemy now and it’s about time we told people to eschew petty politicking so we can fight the common aggressor together.
Signed
Bukari Ali
Regional Communication
Upper West Region – Wa
0205730977