The Rawlingses are crying for the Moon!

By Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor

E-mail: [email protected]

Friday, September 30, 2011

Former First Lady Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings is in the news again, making utterances that indicate the depth to which her family has sunk itself as it continues to seek needless public attention over non-existent concerns. She is reported to have “lashed out at the government for failing to take proper care of the former first family.”

Mrs. Rawlings made the remarks when she addressed her supporters in the Upper East Region as part of her “Thank you” tour, which she also used to refute claims that the Rawlings family was being catered for by the government. She indicated that “the government has turned a blind eye to the needs of her family and neglected certain privileges that should be accorded the husband as a former President.”

These utterances by Nana Konadu should make every Ghanaian want to puke. What at all do the Rawlingses think Ghanaians owe them? And what is the “proper care” that they are demanding to be given?

No matter the amount of accusations they level at the government, I am certain that they won’t wash with Ghanaians. The Rawlingses seem to have gone astray and will not get the empathy that they are craving for on this score. The earlier they recollect themselves, the better it will be for them to know how to live and let live. But can they?

The problems that they have been facing for some time now are mostly self-created; but they will not admit so. These problems are the direct upshot of their inability to control their political ambitions. In fact, the Rawlingses have taken Ghanaians for too long a rough ride and failed to realize the danger into which they have been riding themselves.

Regardless of whatever political office-holding might mean or provide for them, they are insatiable. The more concessions they are given, the more they allow the Oliver Twist in them to dominate their lives and influence their quest for preferential treatment. Having already ruled Ghana for almost 20 years and enjoyed all the benefits of that status, what again do they lack and must now demand so vociferously wherever they go?

Obviously, the extent to which the Rawlingses are dragging matters is not only alarming but it is also obnoxious. It poses a serious challenge to us but we must not budge. I think that having cried themselves hoarse all these years, they will have nothing more to do but to resign themselves to Fate as far as nobody in authority regards them as worth the bother any more. They did it to the Kufuor government and some of us rushed to support them because we felt that they were being unfairly treated. As events turned out, the withdrawal of protocol support for Rawlings did some political harm to the NPP government’s interests. But it seems the Rawlingses are only using such hoarse cries to get public sympathy so as to advance their own self-interests.

With the return of the NDC to power, none of us expected them to suffer a similar fate, if anything at all, because we felt that with their own party in power, there would be no need for any bad blood relationship between them and the government. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be so. We know how it all began and where it has now landed them. Can they not pause for once to re-examine their lives?

Isn’t it becoming to unbecoming for the Rawlingses to continue to present themselves as “victims” in every situation in which they find themselves? At any rate, why do they always expect the government to give them the attention and material support as if they are the only pebble at the beach? Or do they think that the biggest chunk of the national cake is theirs by virtue of their having been in power before?

The controversy surrounding the rebuilding of their Ridge residence may have subsided but it is still at the centre of their grievances against the Mills-led government. Why are the Rawlingses behaving as if in all the years that they were in power they were not paid to be able to save anything to support themselves without relying on the national coffers? Or that they couldn’t invest their earnings in any profitable venture to benefit from after leaving office? I have already said in an earlier article that by their conduct, they are setting a very bad example and creating a nasty impression about themselves. Can they not do without politics? Or manage the Nsawam Cannery that they divested of the state and allocated to themselves as Carridem to serve their purposes? They shouldn’t deceive themselves that they can continue fooling us. Enough of their constant nuisance!

One expects them to stop crying about alleged injustice against them. There is nothing of the sort happening. The government is saddled with many problems that confront Ghanaians every day and the Rawlingses shouldn’t isolate themselves for any special redemption. In any case, hasn’t the government already done its best to resettle them in line with the provisions of the Greenstreet Committee’s recommendations or any other concessions that the government has put in place to support them and Mr. Kufuor?

By constantly drawing needless attention to themselves as “victims,” the Rawlingses are doing nothing but rubbing salt into our wounds. We know how comfortable they‘ve been all these years and they shouldn’t attempt to throw dust into our eyes. Having already had their children well educated through faceless people they called “friends” (assuming that any such people ever existed), do they not know that anything they say to paint themselves as underprivileged will annoy Ghanaians?

I am now more than persuaded that the Rawlingses have an insurmountable problem, which will continue to be their own cup of tea until they either wear themselves out eventually or continue crying to deaf ears.

If their objective is to make the NDC government under President Mills unattractive to the electorate—and by so doing cause its defeat at next year’s elections—they need not go any far to be told the truth that their circumstances will not in any way improve thereafter. By constantly undercutting the government, they are setting themselves up for a worse situation. I pray hard that their dreams come true for us all to see how they will live their lives. Not until they rein themselves in, they will continue to live in fear of the morrow.