By William
Yaw Owusu
Monday May
14, 2018
Former President Jerry John Rawlings has fired
another salvo, insisting that even if the opposition National Democratic
Congress (NDC) is keeping the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government on its toes,
it is failing woefully to put its house in order ahead of the 2020 general
election and beyond.
Mr Rawlings said recent happenings in the NDC are
showing that the party he founded is heavily divided; and until they resolve
their differences, they can’t win power.
According to him, the party is not
unified, not in touch with the grassroots and did not inspire confidence in the
electorate during the run-up to the last elections, and called on the party to
re-embrace its core values of truth, integrity, probity and accountability.
“The
voice and force of conscience and conviction is the only true weapon that the
party needs to re-organise itself towards 2020 and beyond. Having a voice
of conscience and conviction comes with true sacrifice.
“Those who hold strong beliefs and stand by them
tend to suffer abuse, ridicule, insult and sometimes physical abuse; but they
remain resolute because truth cannot be adulterated,” he told a gathering of
former NDC metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives (MMDCEs) who are
working hard to unite the rank and file of the party ahead of the 2020 general
election.
The former appointees held the conference in Accra under
the theme, “Re-organising the NDC for Victory 2020.”
According to the former president, “The NDC seems to
have become masters of destroying our own and spend endless resources
denigrating rivals because their opinions vary. Some of the words that have
been exchanged between party members in the past few weeks and months make me wonder
how we expect to sow unity and stability in the National Democratic Congress.
“The NDC was not a unified party in 2016. The NDC
was not in touch with the grassroots in 2016. The NDC was not a bastion of
stability in 2016 and the NDC sadly did not inspire confidence in the majority of
Ghanaians in 2016.”
He said that the time has come for the party to wean
itself from “those seeking power only for economic benefit,” and advised, “My
message to all gathered here today is, let us wean ourselves of selfish
tendencies and desire to seek political power for economic benefit. That cancer
has eaten deeply into our party.
He stressed, “The strength of the NDC lies in
attaining political power through the power of the people, not the power of the
affluent.”
The NDC founder pointed out, “We suffered a painful
loss in 2016 and while it is important that we do not allow that loss to retard
our progress, we also have to recognize the truth in what caused our losing the
election and exorcise our party of the ills that made us lose, in spite of the considerable
resources at our disposal.”
The common denominator in the NDC flaws, according
to Mr Rawlings, “were the lack of conscience and conviction in our dealings
with the electorate.”
Tracing the NDC’s contribution to national
development, the former president said, “The NDC’s contribution to the
socio-political stability of Ghana was due to our desire to embrace
participatory governance, allowing the grassroots to have a significant say in
the branches, wards, constituencies, regional and national affairs.
“Today many of those who hold high office in the
party are personalities who first identified their leadership qualities from
wards and branches. The ideals that guided and projected them to leading party
figures were their unparalleled conscience, sense of conviction and unbridled
desire to sacrifice for God and country.
According to him, “As a party, we succeeded against
many odds to become a leading political force in the country. Our presence in
the national political arena has contributed more than significantly to the
success of the Fourth Republic and engendered the kind of public discourse and
maturity of the electorate that has benefited the country in no small measure.”
Former President Jerry John Rawlings posited, “As we
hold this dialogue to plot an agenda for a positive performance in 2020, we
have to take due note that the re-organisation is a process that involves
embracing our party’s core ideals and ensuring that we are not swayed by the
crass monetization of Ghanaian politics, which used to be alien to our party
and which unfortunately, has contributed rather notoriously to the surfeit of
negativity and divisiveness plaguing our party.”
He charged, “Let us pursue truth with a conscience
and the power of conviction – a belief in the ideals that established this
party, a belief in the battles that we had to fight since 1979 and a quest to
embrace ideas in an atmosphere of tolerance and brotherliness.”
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