By William
Yaw Owusu
Monday August
27, 2018
Augustus Goosie O. Tanoh, onetime aide to former
President, Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings, has paid a courtesy call on the NDC
founder to get support for his purported plans to become the opposition National
Democratic Congress (NDC) flagbearer in 2020.
Mr. Tanoh who abandoned the NDC ahead of the crucial
2000 general election which the NDC lost to then opposition NPP, to form his
own NRP for which many ardent NDC members have never forgiven him since they claimed
his breakaway made the NDC lose that election which brought President J.A.
Kufuor and Alhaji Aliu Mahama to power, is hiding behind a group calling itself
Organising for Ghana (OfG) to re-launch his political career.
It is obvious that he wants to become NDC flagbearer
for 2020, a position about 10 of the party’s gurus including former President
John Mahama are fighting for.
Mr. Tanoh reportedly called on the former President
last Wednesday, to discuss socio-economic and political issues affecting the
country and the NDC.
Ethical
Collapse
He is reported to have said that there is an ‘ethical
collapse’ of state institutions and ‘the grinding poverty and insecurity of
Ghanaians’ were similar to the situation that pertained in the country in the late1970s
and early 1980s and said an ‘urgent course-correction’ was required for Ghana
to avoid the kind of ‘social collapse’ it faced in 1981.
He said it will
“require a massive and sacrificial national mobilisation that not only solves
the country’s material problems but that challenges the selfish and elitist
values and leadership practices that underpin them”.
He said that “political
parties, the central political institutions that the 31st December Revolution
bequeathed to the Fourth Republic, are simply not delivering value for society
and that the political establishment must be overhauled to bring the masses
back to the forefront of national development struggles.”
OfG
Agenda
Mr. Tanoh said “the OfG agenda is first to
reorganise the NDC to restore voluntarism, participatory decision-making,
integrity, and transparency; second to regain public trust in the NDC and
reposition it in national life; and third to help it recapture power to resume
the national democratic transformation of our country.”
“These experiences have profoundly shaped my own
political outlook and methods. They underlie what I believe I can offer the party
and the Ghanaian people. Today, the NDC needs leadership that understands mass
mobilisation and participatory democracy.
My greatest pride remains my work as Head of Projects and Programmes in
the National Development Committee where we worked with PDCs, WDCs, the Student
& Youth Task Force and other mass organisations in achieving this
mobilisation. If I have any claim to
leadership now, it is based on this experience.”
Display
of Opulence
President Rawlings in his response reiterated the
need for a free and fair electoral process during the NDC contest to select its
leaders and urged that the campaigns be conducted without the open display of
opulence as had happened in the past.
He would leave the decision as to who leads the NDC
into the 2020 election to the collective judgement of the delegates and
promised not to be an obstacle to any of the aspirants.
Rawlings
Factor
Ahead of the December 7, 2018 NDC election of who
becomes the flagbearer, former President Rawlings has re-established his
control of the party since all the aspirants are dashing to his Ridge office in
Accra to pay homage to him.
The NDC tried to go into the 2016 general election
without their founder and in the end they were ‘cut to size’ by then opposition
New Patriotic Party (NPP) on December 7.
Even former President Mahama whose ‘babies with
sharp teeth’ have undermined Mr. Rawlings, has seen the need to pay homage to
the founder as he seeks a second chance to lead the NDC.
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