Rawlings runs riot

•Hijacks Mills' Door-To-Door

Former President Jerry John Rawlings was in full flight yesterday, hurling innuendos and calling the ruling government names.

Hinting of a possible recurrence of a revolution, he stated that only those who had built hotels and wronged the state would fear June 4 and that because his family had not built any hotel and had no links with cocaine, they had nothing to fear.

Addressing a June 4 rally at Somanya in the Eastern region, the former president tooted his own horns when he announced that one of his daughters was about to become a lawyer and the other a doctor and that neither of them had built a hotel.

Jumping on the Prof Mills' door-to-door campaign strategy, the former President noted that it was necessitated by the fact that the NDC flagbearer was not attracting the desired publicity from the state media.

Mr. Rawlings, whose body language suggested that he too would join in the ongoing Mills' “I Care For You Door To Door” campaign, encouraged Ghanaians not to wait for the 2008 elections but join the NDC flagbearer as he knocks on doors.

He added that Ghanaians should expect him any day any time at their doorsteps because he was going to move into full gear.

The strategy, he hinted, had scared the New Patriotic Party (NPP), which he accused of ruling with a stolen verdict because it never won the 2004 polls.

He defended the June 4 coup and poured venom on his one-time pal, Major Boakye-Djan (rtd), whom he said was going about claiming to be the hero of June 4.

For him, the former army officer was being influenced by a quest for power.

The former president, for the umpteenth time, defended the overthrow of Dr. Limann's government, saying it was necessitated by the fact that the late president did not appreciate the ideals of June 4.

His wife, Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, when she took her turn to address the gathering, was not charitable to the forthcoming re-denomination exercise of the national currency.

According to the former First Lady, who is also President of the 31st December Women's Movement, the re-denomination exercise was only a ruse intended to provide the NPP with money for the 2008 campaign.

The General Secretary of the party, Mr. Asiedu Nketia, a.k.a. General Mosquito, said he would drag the government to court because of its National Youth Employment Programme.

The programme, he stated, was a subtle way of floating a private security organization for the government, which was unconstitutional.

He served notice that he would go ahead with the court action regardless of the hitches he might encounter.

Still on the same subject, the party's deputy Propaganda Secretary, Nurudeen Bawa warned that if the government failed to disband the Youth Employment Programme, they (NDC) too would call in the cadres.

The NDC too, he noted, required a policing of polling stations during the 2008 elections and would engage retired commandos and other revolutionary organizations during the polls.

The impression the two speakers sought to create was that the National Youth Employment Programme was designed to provide personnel for an NPP private security organization, which according to them would be used during the 2008 elections.

They hinted they too would do same by recalling retired commandos and members of other revolutionary organizations.
June 4 was the day on which the country witnessed an unprecedented execution of eight former Heads of State.

The execution was done to cleanse the nation of various malpractices, according to then leader of the so-called revolution, Mr. Jerry John Rawlings.

For him, what happened on that fateful day was a spontaneous action which could not be stopped.

More blood, he observed, could have been spilled and he had always said that whenever he had the opportunity.
Rawlings had always defended the June 4 action as a necessity for which he did not seem to have any remorse.

The day was part of the country's catalogue of holidays until a court ruling struck it out recently.

Since then, the NDC founder had always assembled party faithful to celebrate it through speeches like the one which unfolded in Somanya yesterday.

The speeches at June 4 functions had always been vitriolic, hence their being called the “boom speeches of Rawlings.”

Antagonists of June 4 had described the speeches as nothing but the nostalgia which grips the former leader as he recalls the “good old days”.

For protagonists however, it is a day worth remembering because it changed the history of Ghana positively.