An Ashanti To Lead NDC? No Way

Akua Bonsu

What a surprise. Both the NDC Executive and youth movement are the first to throw their weight behind hapless Mills in an apparent effort to thwart Nana Konadu Rawlings’ presidential bid. Konadu may be married to Rawlings and has been an NDC icon. And quite frankly she is not exactly my idol. But the manner in which mostly the Ewes, who have always seen no wrong in what Rawlings does, are brazenly opposing his wife’s presidential bid raises many questions.

I am not advocating for a Konadu presidency – far from it. And I am well aware that her challenge to a sitting president in an intra party skirmish is unprecedented in Ghana’s party politics. But the sheer incompetence that has characterized Mill’s administration leaves little wonder that he would be challenged in his own party. The question is who should mount that challenge?

Vice President John Dramani Mahama would not run against his boss. That’s unheard of. Dr. Ekow Spio Garbrah, who I think is one of the truly sharp minds in the NDC, has no base in the party – not surprisingly given the party’s composition. And the names of most other party stalwarts do not resonate outside their own homes. That leaves the wife of the party’s founder who has galvanized, rather autocratically, the party’s women’s wing. Constitutionally the founder himself cannot run for president again.

So why should Nana Konadu Rawlings not run for president? Mills is almost guaranteed to lose because no sane Ghanaian wants to live an additional four years in a country in which when one calls the police, the NDC foot soldiers show up. I admit that is a sarcastic way of saying the NDC foot soldiers run the country. And the person who calls himself the leader of our country has so far not lifted a fingure to do anything about it. No sane Ghanaian wants the shame of a Dzi wofie asem foreign policy that was devised in part to curtail refugee influx, but which resulted as much and guaranteed unfriendly relations with our Quatarra-led neighbor.

That’s not all, no sane Ghanaian wants to live any additional years under an administration whose only area of excellence is blaming everything, including the rain on the opposition party while showing absolutely nothing original as its accomplishment in almost two and a half years. And certainly no sane Ghanaian wants to see a continuation of a government whose leader is the poster boy for cluelessness, ineptitude and divisiveness.

The preceding litany of failures is what legitimizes Nana Konadu Rawlings’ candidacy. So why would her adversaries constitute a particular segment of the NDC party? Why would the NDC in central Region not be the first to declare its support for hometown Mills? The answer is simple. In the minds of Ewes, hatred for anything Ashantis supercedes all else, and Konadu is an Ashanti. End of conversation.