Cash And Carry Core Values And Swedru Declaration

Former President Jerry John Rawlings cannot be taken seriously when he virulently accuses the current leadership of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) of using its so-called Unity Walks, held monthly in various cities across the country, to promote the vaulting presidential ambitions of some prominent and powerful individuals in the party at the expense of others who may be equally qualified to lead the party into the 2020 Presidential Election but may not be as popular or oiled with money (See “Rawlings ‘Rubbishes’ NDC Unity Walk; Says Unity Walk Only Serving Parochial Interest” MyJoyOnline.com / Modernghana.com 6/4/18).

The fact of the matter is that the behavior and mindset of both the organizers of the Unity Walks and the party leaders whose presidential ambitions are being shamelessly promoted, strikingly reflect the megalomaniacal and egocentric temperament of the undisputed Founding-Father of the National Democratic Congress. His call for the promotion of the presidential ambitions of the party’s leaders to be inclusive, rather than “parochial” or “selective,” is rather ironic, because the NDC was incontrovertibly established on the egocentric and megalomaniacal ambitions of Chairman Rawlings and his staunchest and most faithful partner in crime, to wit, Mrs. Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings.

Unlike the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), for example, the presidential candidacy of Ghana’s longest-ruling strongman was never either challenged or contested. The NDC was always envisaged to be the private property of Mister and Missus Rawlings, even as Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, the party’s career General-Secretary, had occasion to sarcastically observe about nine or ten years ago, shortly after the bloody couple was prevented from imposing their choice of Vice-Presidential Candidate on then-Candidate John Evans Atta-Mills. At the time, Mrs. Rawlings vehemently protested that the then-newly selected candidate for Vice-President, Mr. John Dramani Mahama, was a mischief-making rascal who could not be trusted.

Well, as it shortly turned out, the protester and her husband wanted the position of Vice-Presidential Candidate for the Life-President (or is it Patron?) of the December 31^st Women’s Movement. Now, let us fast-forward to 2007, or thereabouts, in what widely became known as the “Swedru Declaration,” when Chairman Rawlings insisted against all reasoning and common sense that until Prof. Atta-Mills, late, then running for the Presidency for the third time, got elected President of the Democratic Republic of Ghana, the NDC was not going to present any other more viable and independent-minded candidate for nomination as the party’s Presidential Candidate, as was widely speculated to be the desire of the overwhelming majority of the Ghanaian electorate. Now, Mr. Rawlings needs to be called upon to explain where such peremptory and preemptive stance amounted to the fostering, or promotion, of “inclusiveness” in the choice of leadership of the National Democratic Congress.

It has long been observed that “Those who live in glass houses ought not to throw stones.” In attacking the organizers of the party’s Unity Walks, by virulently accusing them of flagrantly promoting the political interests and ambitions of a select few, Chairman Rawlings was, of course, darn guilty of throwing stones from his glass house of abject hypocrisy. As the mentor and political and ideological role-model for party hacks like Messrs. Mahama, Alban Bagbin and Joshua Alabi, among a platoon of others, Chairman Rawlings never practiced inclusivity or inclusiveness for him to imperiously demand the same of his former mentees.

That was what his Darwinian Cash-and-Carry healthcare policy was inescapably about. Selfishness writ large. And it is primarily for this reason that even as he recently attested himself, the NDC-sponsored Unity Walks appear to be creating more problems than this hot-air-blowing electioneering campaign platform was intended to solve. It also goes without saying that Chairman Rawlings’ most enduring legacy is Tribalism, especially Anti-Akan Tribalism. So what is all this bunk about political inclusivity?

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs