Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings
Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By
William Yaw Owusu
Wednesday December 5, 2012.
With less than two days to a crucial presidential
and parliamentary election, the founder of ruling National Democratic Congress
(NDC) former President Jerry John Rawlings appears to have nailed the coffin of
some of his party people when he said yesterday that the party he founded wants
to stay in office to cover-up their corruption.
“Some people are bent on using violence to
perpetuate their stay because of their corruption.”
The former president was speaking to an
Accra-based radio station Citi Fm after
meeting former Nigerian strongman, President Olusegun Obasanjo who is in the
country as the leader of ECOWAS Election Observer Mission to Ghana that
are monitoring Friday’s general elections.
He complained bitterly about the conduct of an NDC
candidate, Kobbie Woyome, brother of Alfred Agbesi Woyome in the Tongu areas in
the Volta Region saying “Clearly, it is because he does not want to be unseated
by the integrity of the independent candidate,” that was why he was behaving
that way.
“There is this chap in one of the Tongu areas…what
is he called…this Woyome chap…the NDC candidate…has gone to report to a collection
of queenmothers as well as to the assemblies, accusing the independent as well
as the NPP candidate of plotting to use machetes on the election day that this
plot was hatched in Ashiaman and he has a tape recording…oh come on. You don’t
go and fabricate things like that!”
The former President said that “I hope the police
are taking the appropriate steps to investigate,” but was quick to add that the
NDC candidate’s allegation are “stupid”.
“The point is that when a chap so audaciously with
such a corrupt background like Woyome would look at the queenmothers,
respectable people like that, the assembly people and make such a serious
stupid allegation against a gentleman like Mr. Klutse, I don’t know who the NPP
candidate is, in a largely NDC support area, I mean that is going a little too
far.”
Assessing the problems being faced by the NDC in
the various constituencies, Mr. Rawlings said “John (President Mahama) needs
people of integrity and the people of integrity were not given the chance in the
constituency elections and that is what is forcing them to join other parties
or come as independent candidates.”
“I think these are some of the things that
happened, you know, talking for the NDC lot, John (Mahama) enjoys a good
support on the ground as far as the NDC is concerned but I know some of his own
people are sabotaging him.”
He said that “the chap for instance has gone to
post his picture on top of John’s picture. I have taken pictures and I can show
it to you. I heard about it I didn’t believe it until somebody showed it to me.
That is not the only place, in some of the rural areas in the northern parts a
similar thing is happening.”
The former Ghanaian president, who never shies
away from expressing his strong views when asked if he would vote on Friday,
laughed and said “why won’t I?”
Asked again whom he was going to vote for, he said
“actually I wouldn’t have minded telling you who I was going to vote for in
terms of the Parliamentary candidates, but not the Presidential”.
“We leave it at that” and when probed further, he
said “of course!” but did not mention which Presidential candidate he was going
to vote for, contrary to perception that the NDC founder had endorsed John
Mahama.
It is interesting that a founder of a party would
decline to stick his neck out to openly declare his support for the party’s
candidate as he did for Prof Atta Mills in 2008.
Commenting on public fears that disputes in the
electoral process could plunge the country into chaos, Rawlings said “I
wouldn’t be that worried but I am saying that the underlining factors are such
that we cannot take things for granted.”
“When the political atmosphere is devoid of a moral
stuff or a moral high ground by any one of the parties then it can be quiet
provocative.”
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