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7 days ago

EULOGY TO SNR COMRADE DR. KWASI PRATT Jnr. —————————————— Dear Snr Comrade Kwasi, 1. I write this tribute not as the President of the Ghana Law Society, nor as Govt Chief Whip of Parliament, and certainly not as Member of Parliament for South Dayi. 2. I write simply as your younger brother, comrade-in-arms, and your student: one who has followed you keenly for years & learned greatly from your principles. An Honour Long Overdue 3. When the University of Cape Coast (my alma mater) announced its decision to confer on you the degree of Doctor of Letters, Honoris Causa, I was not surprised. I felt profoundly vindicated. 4. What UCC, Ghana's citadel of critical humanism, has done is to clothe you in formal academic honours, what the people of Ghana have known for half a century: that you are a scholar of formidable proportions, whose lecture hall has been the newsroom, whose library has been the daily struggles of ordinary Ghanaians, and whose thesis has been an unflinching defence of social justice. 5. This honour is therefore not merely ceremonial. It is historic. It is deserved. It is earned. Fifty Years of Unwavering Consistency 6. For fifty unbroken years, you have exhibited a rare & luminous consistency in Ghanaian public life. As a student activist in the 1970s, you found courage to challenge military abuse, when silence was more profitable. 7. Through the difficult and ideologically contested 1980s, you chose grassroots organization and political education over exile and comfort. 8. In the Fourth Republic, when many of your contemporaries converted activism into patronage, you remained anchored to principle-unbought, unbowed & unbroken. 9. In a Republic where many become politically storm-tossed like a driftwood in water, you have remained rooted. That rootedness is your greatness. Journalism as Public Policy Education 10. Through your masterful leadership of The Insight Newspaper, you transformed journalism into a rigorous school of public policy scrutiny & public accountability. You succeeded where technocrats failed-you made public policy intelligible to the pedestrian man. 11. You taught market women how IMF conditionalities translate into the price of kenkey. You taught farmers why Article 267 of the Constitution on stool lands is not abstract law but the legal foundation of their livelihoods. You taught mining communities that 50% of mineral royalties ring-fenced for community development under Act 912 is not government charity, but a statutory entitlement. You demystified power when others deliberately mystified it. The Scholarship of the Street and the State 12. As the starman of the Committee for Joint Action, the Socialist cum Pan-African Movement in Ghana, you have insisted on a fundamental truth-that public policy must be judged not by GDP growth alone, but by equity, by jobs, by justice, and by national sovereignty. 13. You have taught us that, a budget is not merely numbers, but values; that law must be felt in the market and on the farm, not just recited in courtrooms by lawyers & judges. 14. You have never sought political office, yet you have shaped every office. You never held state power, yet you have audited state power more fiercely & more effectively than many paid to do so. An Earned Doctorate 15. Comrade, this Doctor of Letters is therefore not honorary in the conventional sense. It is earned-earned through five decades of fearless editorials crafted at nocturnal hours when others rested, through courageous radio commentaries when it was perilous to speak, through undiluted intellectual honesty that chose the people over influence-peddling. 16. Cudos, my teacher & my Snr comrade. Your pen is your gown. Your life of sacrifice is your citation. Your integrity is your real doctoral certificate. May you continue to write, to provoke, to teach, and to inspire for many more years. Aluta Continua! Victoria Ascerta! Spiritus Invictus!! Rockson-Nelson E.K. Dafeamekpor, Esq.

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