Ex-President Rawlings has become a pain in in the neck of President Mills.
Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Wednesday May 11, 2011.
Victor Smith, Ghana’s Ambassador to the Czech Republic and former aide to Ex-President Jerry John Rawlings has said the revelation of secret tapes purported to be emanating from the home of his former boss is an indication that Mr Rawlings is spying on President John Evans Atta Mills.
“Why…are you spying on the Presidency? I really want the National Security to sit up then”, he said in a reaction to a revelation that President Mills had caught on tape discussing about blowing GH¢90million on his re-election bid as NDC flagbearer.
Mr. Smith’s outburst came after Herbert Mensah; the man who calls himself a friend of the Rawlingses repeated his claims on Adom FM, a Tema based private radio station yesterday that the camp of President Mills in the NDC flagbearership race is bribing delegates with huge sums of money in his attempt to lead the party for the 2012 general elections.
He said yesterday on Adom FM: “The tapes were brought to us…we listened to those tapes… it had details of other areas including intimidation, including alternative bank account details, naming of persons in government, people in the Castle.
“I do not want to go into detail…I do not want to inflame the situation further than that,” Herbert stated.
Herbert Mensah is saying that Former President Rawlings; founder of the NDC has security tapes that suggest that President Mills has sanctioned a whopping GH¢90million to be used for his campaign to lead the ruling party for a second term.
According to Mr. Mensah who is also a former Chief Executive of Kumasi Asante Kotoko, he listened to the tapes together with the Ex-President and it was clear that the huge amount is going to be used to influence delegates to select the President as the party’s flagbearer whilst at the same time ensuring the former First Lady Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings does not succeed in her presidential bid to unseat the President.
“We are hearing of budgets of GH¢90million to ensure that she does not make it…some of the newspapers have started publishing stories of loans being given to women organizers,” Mr. Mensah had told first Peace FM on Monday.
He said everybody knows that if the impending delegates’ congress is free and fair the former First Lady will win hands down saying “we do not want a candidate who is not a unifier. We need somebody who is capable of bringing the nation together and capable of bringing the party together.”
Immediately the family friend of the Rawlingses hanged the telephone on Adom FM, Victor Smith called into the programme from his Prague-base, accusing the former first family of working towards the disintegration of the NDC.
“If they are going to allows such things to be put out against our government…security tapes…what is the security tape they are talking about…Are they recording meetings of the President or National Security, who did the recording and made it available to the Former President?”
“There are issues that we should not allow to lie quietly…They are disturbing the peace of the party…Are we enemies in one party for Herbert to say they have intercepted a security tape?” he lamented.
Mr. Smith said what Herbert was saying about President Mills sanctioning GH¢90million for his campaign might not be the truth but rather somebody’s imagination saying “you put out such dangerous information and when you finish you call for peace and unity in the party.”
“We hear so many things about what is going on at former President’s place. We hear many things about what Mrs. Rawlings is doing. I get a lot of information about the goings on in that house. We are not out there speaking because we want peace.”
He admitted that what is currently going on in the ruling NDC is reducing investor confidence because he is being inundated with queries from diplomats about the situation in Ghana.
He said Herbert Mensah is not the Auditor General or the Minister of Finance to determine misuse of public funds after the latter had expressed fears that the GH¢90million purportedly sanctioned by the President for his campaign might be tantamount to misuse of public funds saying “he should go to CHRAJ to make his argument”.
Ruling out a possible Konadu victory in the primary, Mr. Smith said “Mrs. Rawlings is not going to win this election… we stand a good chance of winning 2012 when Prof. Mills is the flagbearer.”
“You wonder why former President Rawlings is on the back of the President all this while…You ruled for many years and nobody from your party tried to disrupt your administration…We gave you our fullest support…Why is President Mills going through all that he is going through with the founder and his better half,” Smith queried.
Araba Tagoe, Western Regional Womens Organizer of the NDC also called into the programme to accuse Herbert Mensah of fanning troubles in the NDC.
“We know about his deeds. We do not want to expose and disgrace him. He should back off the NDC,” she screamed.
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