Coup rumours blamed for increase in headline sizes

Not that I want to alarm anyone, but here's a selection of headlines in Accra papers earlier this week:



So here's the story: Ghana's current president, John Agyekum Kufuor, early this week accused former president Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings of soliciting funds for a coup from unnamed 'oil-rich' countries. He declined to give further details, saying only that the information came from security reports.

Rawlings replied that he was "astounded" by the allegations, and stated "categorically and unambiguously" that he has "not gone anywhere to
solicit for funds from anybody for any purpose."

His outrage would be much more believable if history didn't tell us Rawlings was as likely to throw a coup as a party! For those unfamiliar with Ghanaian history, here's a reader's digest condensed history of Rawlings' coups:

Rawlings first attempted to seize power in May 1979, but he and other coup leaders were caught and imprisoned. However, military officials sympathetic to his cause overthrew the government and released Rawlings in June 1979, two weeks before a planned parliamentary election.

After seizing power, Rawlings' group (described by BBC as "mostly a pack of stoned and brutal idealists") executed all of the country's former military dictators and several others, but then held the scheduled elections and handed over power to a new president, Dr. Hilla Limann, in September 1979.

But Rawlings (pictured right), as well as civilians and military members, were unsatisfied with corruption and economic decline under Limann's rule (including inflation rates of around 70 per cent in 1981), so Rawlings ousted Limann in December 1981, after which he suspended the constitution, dissolved the parliament and banned political parties.

The ban on political parties continued until Rawlings held constitutional elections in 1992. His party, the National Democratic Congress, won that election and was re-elected in 1996. The constitution prevented him from running for a third term. In total, he ruled Ghana for 19 years.

When the current president, John Kufuor of the opposition New Patriotic Party, was elected in 2000, it was the first peaceful transition of power in Ghana's history since independence. All other changes in national leadership in the previous 40-some-odd years had somehow involved coups.

Kufuor is now in his second term, and elections are expected again in 2008. Rawlings said in the days following the allegations that he wouldn't need any coup, and rather he expected the current regime would be toppled by Ghanaians through democratic means in upcoming elections.

In any case, I was chatting with someone from the Canadian High Commission on Friday, and she said no one at the CHC had discussed the matter. Which I'd take to mean they are not seriously concerned about the possibility a coup ... or they just don't read the papers.

The papers themselves seemed to dismiss the coup idea later in the week. Certainly I don't get the impression there would be any public support for a coup:



I particularly liked these subheads describing Rawlings' state of mind:





The issue had mostly fallen out of the papers completely by the weekend.

So I don't want anyone at home to worry! I just wanted to share the headlines. Ghanaian newspaper editors love nothing more than sensational headlines in 100-point fonts.