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13.08.2014 Feature Article

Bring It On, Mr And Mrs Rawlings!

Bring It On, Mr And Mrs Rawlings!
13.08.2014 LISTEN

My knee jerk reaction after listening to Mrs. Rawlings as she garrulously accused the leadership of the ruling National Democratic Congress [NDC] of doing little to rid the party of corruption and thievery, was that her smoldering knavery and smokescreen epitomized the character Mrs Nickleby in Charles Dickens' novel, "Nicholas Nickleby".Then again the loathe and mortifying bubble of responses by some toadies of the Mahama government came as all too predicted.

Suffice it then to say that the babies with sharp teeth have petulantly metamorphosed into bellicose squealers and popinjays who have no reservations in giving the rough edges of their tongue. Of course, no pun intended!

As an avid political observer, I found the former first lady's twaddle and invective to be inexcusably hypocritical and patently pregnant with duplicitous disdain. And just what does she and her husband, Jerry John Rawlings seek to do when they gratuitously stir a hornet's nest? It goes without saying that the former first couple find themselves in a state of solitary. They don't hold sway anymore. They are not often in the news as they used to. So in other to attract media attention, they would occasionally make an exhibition of themselves.


In a tepid one and a half page article authored by Mr Rawlings, titled, "Africa needs people power", and written in the wake of the G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland in 2005, the former president stated rather jarringly that working with the World Bank and the IMF, his government halted Ghana's decline after inheriting a near collapsed state but managed to build a 5% growth rate before handing over to the Kufour administration.

He further claimed vacuously that it would not have been possible if he had presided over a corrupt, dictatorial and exploitative government. In another horridly captious fashion, Mr Rawlings had the testicular fortitude and chutzpa to farcically decry what he considered to be politics of attrition during the Kufour administration.This was in the wake of the trial of Kwame Peprah and Co.

Well, my incontinent admiration for Mr. and Mrs. Rawlings has not been in doubt vis-a-vis the bravado and tomfoolery with which they assume that most of the youth of today are barely literates and cognitively dissonant to apprise themselves of the sheer terror and repression during the former's reign. Under this delusion, they spew sanctimonious effusions and go on a mundane and hyperbolic self glorification. And while indeed,writing on this subject makes me sick to the stomach, as an aficionado of politics, i would certainly remiss if I remain insouciant on why the former first couple should be treated as abbreviated pieces of nothing.

For starters, need it be told for the umpteen time that more than 110 people were executed during Rawlings' era? They were killed for offences ranging from corruption, economic sabotage, attempted coups, etc.By the time he exited office, many Ghanaians had not been accounted for while some had been crudely forced into exile. Scores of people were led out of cells at night and have since not returned. The air force station guardroom in Burma camp, among many others was used as a shoot grounds for people who were rancorously and wantonly considered undesirable by Chairman Rawlings during the era of the AFRC.

What about the abduction of the three judges and an army officer from their homes in Accra during curfew hours and summarily murdered on June 30,1982?It was not until four days later that a shepherd tending his sheep discovered their charged bodies at the Bundase firing range. After months of sitting by a special investigation board,ten persons including Nana konadu Agyeman Rawlings were recommended to be arrested.In the case of the latter,it was revealed that she kept the key to the vehicle,a white fiat campagnolia jeep used by the murderers.

What were Mr Rawlings's ideals when he rancorously placed over sixty State-owned companies on divestiture and gleefully sold between 1989 and 1992 to either himself or his cronies under the powers of a bent committee,the Divestiture Implementation committee (DIC), a body set up by the PNDC junta to oversee this process of their large scale corruption of selling state lands, buildings and foreign properties to themselves? With the support of the late Ghadafi, the sanguinary Jerry John Rawlings in the egregious pretex that state owned hotels were not yielding good profit hatched a ploy to sell them to himself.

He set up GLAHCO (Ghana-Libyan Arab Holding Company) a partnership between himself and the late Gadhafi to take over Ghanaian hotels, real estates and lands for farming. Continental Hotel and Kumasi City Hotel now Golden Tulip Hotels Ltd were sold for $3,578,125. What about the sale of GHACEM to SCANCEM for 3 million dollars? A deal which was later revealed at a Norwegian court that the upper echelons of the Jerry John Rawlings National Democratic Congress government received bribes of more than $4 million from Scancem with the purpose of consolidating the then Norwegian-owned firm's hold in the local cement industry.

So it is quite tragic and insufferably annoying for Mrs Rawlings, who has broken every rule in the book to farcically and poignantly squeal about corruption after she had loutishly hidden behind carridem to fraudulently purchase Nsawam food cannary, a state owned firm. Paradoxically, when the sweltering wave of comeuppance caught up with her, she tempestuously sued the "Daily Guide" newspaper, Mr Ato Sam, alias Baby Ansabah, Mrs Gina Blay and Western Publications, publishers of the "Daily Guide", for libel when they published a story with the headline, "Milking the Sacred Cow - Konadu owes 2.8 billion to the State" in the Wednesday July 6th 2005 edition. In her suit she shamefacedly demanded general damages including aggravated and/or exemplary damages for libel in respect of the words published by the newspaper on the aforementioned date.

The stark reality is that despite their valiant attempt to portray themselves as a paragon of virtue, their actions are anathema to their pontifical banner of the so -called probity and accountability. I wish one day their swinish rantings and vitriol would vanish into thin air.

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