Head of Government Policy Monitoring and Evaluation at the office of the President, Dr. Tony Aidoo, says he feels “personally scandalized” by former President Jerry John Rawlings’ description of some members of the ruling party as “greedy bastards” and “same old evil dwarfs” and has indicated his readiness to find out from President John Dramani Mahama if he (Dr Aidoo) is part of any of the two groups.
According to him, a careful analysis of the former President’s words show he (Rawlings) seems to know quite a number of people who are corrupt and may have informed President Mahama. Therefore Dr Aidoo said, he intends to find out if perchance he is one of the two groups of people so he can “exonerate himself from that blanket statement” and thus “salvage” his “conscience”
Mr Rawlings stormed the Manifesto launch of the party he founded at the Ho Jubilee Park last Thursday with a challenge to President Mahama to exorcise what he described as “old evil dwarfs” within the party.
When he mounted the dais for his speech, former President Rawlings virtually said nothing about the manifesto being launched, but reinforced his long held sentiments about certain evil forces in the NDC working behind the scenes to scuttle the fortunes of the party.
“I believe the President is beginning to see the action of these same old evil dwarfs. The president needs help and we must pray to God to give him the strength and courage to put his foot down and do what he needs to do…,” the former President said.
Since 2009, Jerry Rawlings has been at loggerheads with executives of the party which he founded because he thought certain people within the party were sacrificing its hard-earned reputation by greedily grabbing national resources for themselves.
In the past, the NDC founder used several expletives to describe these people, including “greedy bastards”, “babies with hard teeth” and “traitors”.
Reacting to some of these name-calling by the ex-president, Dr Tony Aidoo, who was speaking on Radio Gold’s Alhaji and Alhaji programme stated; “There is rule of law in this country and when you have concrete evidence on corruption, you go and prosecute it. So that we do not have the situation where the very corrupt will turn round and point accusing fingers at innocent people as if they are the ones who are corrupt.”
He continued; “the founder of the NDC himself has for the past three and half years, and I’ve been silent over this, been making allegations of corruption against the NDC; they’re greedy bastards and dwarfs and I feel personally scandalized. I feel personally scandalized because it is a general statement that implicates me. It implicates me to the point at which somebody will have the sheer audacity to publish on Ghanaweb that I have an ammunition factory in South Africa, I’ve two mansions valued at $1.5m…when over the past 15years, I’ve been struggling to put up a project at East Legon…so I’m scandalized. But then I believe the founder, as he said the current President is putting his foot down, has obviously managed to disclose to the President those who are the greedy bastards and I have every intention of asking President Mahama; ‘I’m i one of those greedy bastards’ because I need to salvage my conscience. I don’t know may be somewhere along the line, I might have done something that is tantamount to corruption…I need to exonerate myself from the blanket statement of greedy bastards, but until then I am scandalized…,” Tony Aidoo said.
Interestingly, the former Deputy Defence Minister in the previous Rawlings-led NDC regime, admitted that the former President was justified in accusing the NDC of corruption because for over three years, the ruling party has failed to prosecute appointees of the previous government in spite of the availability of “concrete evidence”.
He also associated albeit impliedly the numerous defeat of government at court, to lack of commitment and research on the part of the Attorney General’s Department.
“…The founder and the former president also has a point. Because, if in the face of concrete evidence of wrong doing, the NDC government has used three and a half years without landing a single successful prosecution against people who there is concrete evidence of corruption, then why wouldn’t you invite accusations of corruption against you?…How come Asamoah Boateng is still walking a free man?…Okay, it’s sub judicial. How come in the Ghana International Airline case, the Attorney-General walked into my office and I gave them three boxes of document containing clear evidence of conspiracy to kill Ghana Airways, and the case is still in court? We botched the Ghana@50 prosecution when we ourselves set up a Commission of Inquiry and within the Article setting up the commission, you state categorically that the witnesses have immunity and then you go and start criminal prosecution, what kind of thing is this? So why wouldn’t the founder and former president sound frustrated?" Dr Tony Aidoo fumed.
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