I bet, without Rawlings’s inclusion, NDC may remain in opposition forever!
I recall predicting repeatedly during the 2016 electioneering campaign that the NDC founder, Ex-President Rawlings, might not vote for former President Mahama.
Obviously, it was a mere prediction, not a prophecy, for I am not a ‘Man of God’. Somehow, my forecast stemmed from the actions and inactions of former President Rawlings prior to the 2016 election.
Former President Rawlings claimed to have founded the NDC Party based on the principles of probity, accountability and transparency, thus he is somewhat paranoid about a wind of corruption.
This is the man who is said to appal corruption so much so that he once went into conniption-fit and tortured and exterminated some people he perceived to be siphoning Ghana’s scarce resources.
Based on his ostensive conviction, one could easily foretell that he would not endorse an alleged corrupt NDC administration despite his devoted attachment to the party.
Of course, former President Rawlings did not spare some prominent politicians and business men and women he suspected of hijacking the progress of the nation through unbridled sleazes and corruptions.
Suffice it to mention that many of the suspects alleged crime was to lawfully secure banks loans to expand their businesses.
I also acknowledged back then that no matter how corrupt the NDC administration turned out, their punishment was not going to come in the form of a neanderthaloid firing squad used effervescently by the NDC Party founder, former President Rawlings, to settle a score with the perceived nation wreckers.
But rather I envisioned that the supposedly corruption exponent, former President Rawlings, might punished the perpetrators through the universal adult suffrage.
It would be recalled that leading to the 2016 election, we witnessed how the seemingly unhappy former President Rawlings kept grumbling and raising concerns about the rampant sleazes and corruptions in ex-President Mahama’s administration.
As it was expected, the NDC faithful censured and abused me over the prediction. They hate the truth. The truth hurts, they say.
In fact, the NDC apologists are committing political suicide, or worst still, they are living in a denial, for refusing to accept the fact that former President Rawlings is really revered by the foot soldiers more than any other member of the party.
After all, former President Rawlings founded the NDC Party and managed to bring a lot of supporters to his corner.
It would thus appear incredulous for anybody to suggest that former President Rawlings is currently irrelevant in the NDC Party.
Indeed, former President Rawlings still commands respect among the foot soldiers of the party, and most likely, some of his loyalists will be aggrieved over the leadership’s shenanigans towards him.
Unfortunately, however, the NDC’s boisterous brats who are not privy to their party’s history have been upbraiding Rawlings all the time for expressing his grievances over the rot in his party.
“Former President Jerry John Rawlings is not happy with elements in the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) who are allegedly baying for his blood.
“He is surprised that recent attacks on him have been orchestrated by people within the NDC, the party he founded.
“The ex-President cited the petition presented by the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP) leader, Henry Lartey to the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) and the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) asking them to investigate circumstances under which he (Mr Rawlings) reportedly received an amount of $5 million from the late Nigerian Head of State, General Sani Abacha, as gift in 1998.
“Mr Rawlings says his own people in the NDC are behind the ploy to sully his hard-won reputation” (See: ‘$5m Abacha cash, NDC chasing me-says Rawlings’; dailyguideafrica.com, 18/10/2016).
Indeed, they have been ceaselessly castigating their founder Rawlings for expressing his disgust over the rot in his party.
In fact, Rawlings had previously voiced out his opinion over the insulting behaviour of the NDC brats.
Take, for example, Rawlings had this to say during the NDC’s 2012 National Congress: “Mr. President, fellow Ghanaians it is said that we should not throw out the baby with the bath water, but what we do when some of the babies in the tub are babies with hard teeth, biting and spewing some very horrible invectives? Should they not be lowered out with the dirty water? After all one bad nut is all it takes to spoil the taste in your mouth.
“When we find ourselves at a wooden bridge with some planks rotten, do we wait to get new planks before removing the rotten ones or do we remove the rotten ones immediately” (JJ Rawlings, August 30, 2012).
Given that the vast majority of the members of the current NDC Party executive were proselytised by the Ex-President Rawlings, one would have expected an outright condemnation of the incessant insults directed at the founder of the party, but that was not the case.
However the alleged sour relations between the founder and some of the current national party executives, the indefatigable Rawlings unconditional love for his brainchild (NDC) has not tapered off, not by any stretch of the imagination.
In fact, one does not have to look far for the evidence of his devoted attachment to the party he gleefully autographed with his blood.
His 2016 speech to commemorate the 31st December 1981 revolution was a clear manifestation of his unbridled attachment to the party he founded in 1992.
Ex-President Rawlings laments: “Need I remind you that the NDC was built on principles and values that emerged as a result of circumstances that led to our birth?”
“The fallen heroes we honour today expect of us in the least, never to relapse into those same old days. But that has not been the case.
“In the wake of the revolution we made pronouncements that summed up the state of affairs that prevailed then.
“I admonished back then that; “Ghana should be a land where it will be accepted practice and norm that those who earn the privilege to govern, should administer in humility, conscious that they are the servants of the people and are ready to submit themselves and their actions to public scrutiny and accountability” (Rawlings, 2016).
In sum, some of us will be extremely surprised if former president and the founder of the NDC Party J. J. Rawlings refused to come out of his redundancy and rescues his beloved NDC Party from the people he inexorably describes as “babies with hard teeth”.
K. Badu, UK.
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