Mills Doesn't Need 2nd Term To Be Successful, Says Spio-Garbrah

A Vice-Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has said that President J.E.A. Mills does not need to seek re-election to be deemed to be a successful president.

Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah said while the President had every right to contest the next elections, he must be guided by the example of former South African President Nelson Mandela who served only one term and earned the respect of many the world over.

Speaking on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show, Mr Spio-Garbrah said the view that every president must necessarily serve their two four-year terms to be successful was a myth.

The former Communications Minister advised the president to look into the mirror and decide whether it was in his interest to seek re-election.

He asserted that some people in government and others who to him, their survival depended largely on the president remaining in office may – in an effort to protect their interest and keep the taps from which resources and government largesse flow, pressurise the president to contest the elections in 2012. That, he said, could not be discounted at all.

Dr Spio-Garbrah, who failed in his bid to become his party’s flag bearer in 2006, would not be drawn into the conflict within the ruling party, and said he did not want to aggravate the current flame in the party.

Whether President Mills or former First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, emerges the party’s flag bearer, Dr Spio-Garbrah believes the NDC would go into next year’s election fractured, badly bruised and limping towards defeat, if urgent measures were not put in place to mend the cracks and deal with the increasing discontent and disillusionment within the rank and file of the party.

Many, he intimated, were those who felt betrayed, marginalised, abused, misused, under-utilised and bitter, so everything must be done to placate them, if the party was to rise above its current challenges.

The precarious position of the NDC going into the 2012 elections, he argued, had been worsened by the government’s failure to successfully prosecute any of the people the party accused of corruption while it was in opposition.

That situation, for him, created doubts about the party’s sincerity in the minds of Ghanaians when it charged its opponents of wrongdoing.

He said the petty squabbles in the party must stop and a family meeting must be called to settle the differences between party members.

Leaders of the NDC, he indicated, had a duty to be honest, frank, courteous, deferential and friendly in their dealings with each other.