Buy Mills Get Rawlings Free- Part 4

I return to my old mantra for the fourth time and to the NDC BOGOF (Buy One Get One Free) idea in the wake of the traditional ranting of former President Rawlings and the NDC boycott of the recent State Awards as a result of the former president’s warning about it. I have returned with a word of advice to Ghanaians that we have an option here in this year’s election as Nana Akufo Addo so eloquently puts it; “before us is the opportunity to fundamentally improve the lives of Ghanaians. The choice is whether to move forward with the New Patriotic Party or go back to and with the National Democratic Congress. There are clear differences between the major parties. There are differences in our records in government. There are differences in our respective past performances; there are differences in our respective visions for the future and there are differences in the Presidential candidates of the parties.”

The NPP statement recently issued in response to the Rawlings’ ranting hit the nail right on the head when they said “First, the NDC Flagbearer, Prof John Atta Mills, after pledging to accept a state award offered by President Kufuor, backed down after pressure from his mentor, former President Rawlings. After Mr. Rawlings and Ex-Capt Tsikata condemned the awards, many Ghanaians who wish the cause of democracy and the NDC well, hoped and prayed that for once, Prof Mills would stand with democracy, the “new” NDC and for his principles by rejecting the “ Edict of Ridge” by accepting the honour he had agreed to accept. As a “tro-tro” driver said perceptively a few days before Prof Mills announced his decision “If Massa say ino for go, ino go go!” Alas, he did not. He could not and he is not yet his own man.”

The NPP statement actually posed a question about the self actualization of Professor Mills as a man. I will go as far as make as statement to Ghanaians that Prof Mills has not yet accomplished his self actualization as a politician and therefore a vote for Prof Mills in December mean a third term for President Rawlings. The disrespect that has characterized Rawlings’ feelings towards Ghanaians has reached its climax with him choosing the 26th anniversary of the gruesome murder of the three judges and the retired army officer under his watch and Ghana’s 48th republican anniversary to pour scorn on our democracy and rule of law. Prof. Mills so typically singing his master’s voice also goes on air to say that Tsatsu Tsikata must be honoured rather than imprisoned, a clear statement written for him from the “Ridge Boom Shop”.

As if the pouring of scorn on our hard won rule of law and democracy was not enough, some P/NDC apologists, 26 years on and 7 years after the abrogation of the Criminal Libel Law still threaten to kill judges and journalists who pass judgments and write about them respectively. Professor Mills sits in his Kuku Hill as a prisoner of Rawlings and Real NDC conscience, and does nothing about this intimidation of democracy and the institutions of democracy.

Professor Mills is indeed a prisoner because no matter what he does to please his master, his master will never appreciate him. Rawlings incoherently says of him and his Kuku Hill cocoons “on the rare occasion, when an attempt is made to heed our counsel, it’s done late when its relevance is long gone either because some have compromised themselves, cowardice or an attempt to prove our “independent-ness”. This political behaviour has been very costly.” Mr. Rawlings knows that the Real NDC heed his counsel and hang on every word he says. He knows that what he wants is what the NDC leadership does. But typical of him, he is never satisfied with any person or groups of persons who work for him. That is why all his June 4 companions are no longer with him. The soldiers that he started the 31st December revolution are no where to be found. He would, and no doubt about it, get rid of all the NDC operatives if not because of the watchful eyes of this democratic dispensation.

The fact of the matter is that Rawlings himself knows Mills is not a man of any means hence his use of the word “cowardice” to describe his actions. He describes his instructions, to Prof. Mills to start the year 2008 beating war drums about turning Ghana into Kenya if NDC do not win in December, as “occasional feeble noise”. He does not consider that noise as enough. The difference between former President Rawlings and his former vice is that whereas the boss will actively root for a Ghana in a daily state of rebellion, strikes, coup d’etâts and civil disobedience, his former vice will not mind living in that state of lawlessness because his master and lord has willed it.

Mr. Rawlings regrettably uses Ya Na’s unfortunate death as a triumph card for his baseless and incoherent politics. He calls for the NPP to account for Ya Na’s death while he watched over the decapitation of the Omanhene of Offuman in Brong Ahafo Region and thousands of Kokombas and Nanumbas slaughtered themselves under his watch and with his active insinuation and supply of ammunition. The truth is that Rawlings does not respect the people of the northern descent. He never chose a running mate from the North and he openly criticized his own party for choosing John Mahama from the North. Another case in point is the referral said to have been made by the former President JJ Rawlings in 2005 to Hajia Hawawu the NDC deputy regional Women’s Organiser from Nima who was aspiring to become a Women’s Organiser of NDC in Greater Accra to go to her northern roots if she wants the position. On Sunday, November 20, 2005, The NDC women from Nima descended heavily on former President Jerry John Rawlings, for declaring that, Sonu people, referring to Zongo indigenes should not hold positions, outside of the Northern regions. The NDC founder played the tribal and religious cards at the Greater Accra NDC women’s congress, at the party headquarters in Kokomlemle, Accra, when he openly supported Ms Vivian Ankrah. The Nima women who were present at the meeting were said to have rained insults on him [Daily Guide -28/11/2005].

A man like Rawlings who has systematically abused our human rights and handed over a nation that was bankrupt in 2001 with a demoralized population and a body politic scared by an authoritarian culture’ has the audacity to say he has a moral mandate. A man whose administration from 1982 to 2000 took a startling £8.1billion in foreign loans and yet handed over a bankrupt economy says he has a moral mandate. To quote from an article on Ghanaweb in 2006, ‘But indeed, the evidence that Rawlings’ true legacy lies in his acts of destruction is abundant and overwhelming to the honest and truthful. He was born to destroy. He destroyed Ghanaian Industries; destroyed our Transportation system, including the OSA, Ghana Railways, and Ghana Airways; he destroyed our academic institutions and turned them into institutions that churn out more dog-chain sellers than intellectuals; he destroyed the Ghanaian entrepreneurial spirit by actively working to collapse Ghanaian-owned businesses in their own land of birth; and finally he actively worked to literally destroy human lives by subjecting noble citizens to torture, murder, and gross human rights abuses’. This sums it all up and while the hacker destroyed our heritage, Mills stood by and not only watched but egged him on and to add insults to injury Mills told us all that he would consult him 24/7.

If Rawlings feels he has moral mandate and or is clean and beyond reproach, I dare him and Mills to prevail on the NDC parliamentary Caucus to vote with the NPP members for the removal of the Transition Provisions in the 1992 Constitution. This is my only challenge to him. He should either put up or shut up.

Ghana deserves better than this double comedy act of Rawlings and Mills, the “Laurel and Hardy” of Ghanaian politics. They collectively destroyed our house of enterprise; the will of the people to prosper through business. They both destroyed our health with cash and carry. They both destroyed the house that the Big Six laid the foundations of and which Nkrumah built.

We have come too far to return.

We have come too far with democracy and rule of law to return.

We have come too far with macro-stability to return.

We have come too far with freedom of speech to return.

We have come too close to meeting the Millennium Development Goals of 2015 to return.

We have come too far to achieving a perfect health insurance policy to return.

We have come too far to micro financing to return.

We have come too far to youth employment programme to return.

We have come too far to infrastructural development to return.

We have come too far to Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education to return.

We have come too far to free feeding for school children to return

We have come too far to achieving freedom and justice, the ideal of our

forebears when they gained us our independence to return.

WE HAVE SIMPLY COME TOO FAR, WE WILL NOT CROSS THE RUBICON AND FALL ON OUR OWN SWORDS If Prof Mills ends up as the President of Ghana with a certain Rawlings remote controlling his brains, this will be my message-I AM LEAVING TOWN AND WILL THE LAST PERSON TO LEAVE GHANA PLEASE SWITCH OFF THE LIGHTS I know however that, come December 2008, I will not leave town [Insha Allah] because I trust the good and discerning people of Ghana to exercise their new found freedom from fear and violence and not go back to Mills or his master, Rawlings [Tofeakwa].

God bless our homeland Ghana.

Kwesi Atta-Krufi Hayford

The author is the Chairman of the UK/Eire Branch of the New Patriotic Party.

[You can read more from me by visiting my [email protected]/hattakrufi

Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.