Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings, wife of the Founder of the NDC, has gone public with a demand on former Vice President Atta Mills, flagbearer of the main opposition NDC party, to either chose Mrs. Betty Mould-Iddrisu, a lawyer with Fante/Ga background and third wife of Ghana’s longest serving Minister for Defence, Alhaji Mahama Iddrisu, or risk hearing the misgivings of people like her.
She has also warned Atta Mills to realize that the decision as to who would partner him on the NDC ticket for the forthcoming December 2008 presidential election would not be his alone.
The selection process, she also insists, would not be similar to the previous choices he made in 2000 and 2004.
“I think that they were treating him with kid’s gloves in 2004 and allowed him to do what he wants but this is a crucial election for us and we have to do things properly,” Mrs. Rawlings said, adding that Mills won’t have any veto right over the issue of the NDC running mate anymore.
Speaking on various radio stations Monday and yesterday respectively, Mrs. Rawlings, a very influential sponsor of the Betty-for-Veep campaign, expressed dissatisfaction with media reports that John Mahama had been selected ahead of her favourite candidate.
She made public her preference for Mrs. Mould-Iddrisu, saying she was the best among the three potential running mates, including former Communications Minister and Bole Bamboi MP John Dramani Mahama, and former Kumbungu MP and Minister for Employment and Social Welfare, Alhaji Muhammed Mumuni.
Mrs. Rawlings decision to go public last Monday on RADIO GOLD was occasioned by reports in the GYE NYAME CONCORD and DAILY DISPATCH newspapers that the NDC flagbearer and former Vice President is set to announce the handsome and affable Member of Parliament for Bole Bamboi as his running mate by the end of the week.
Another report in the state-owned DAILY GRAPHIC of yesterday, reinforcing the reports of the two private newspapers the previous day (Monday) caused Mrs. Rawlings to warn on PEACE FM and JOY FM that the NDC presidential candidate will not have things his own way in the choice of who runs with him in the December elections.
Speaking on JOY FM, Mrs. Rawlings said Prof Mill was treated with ‘kid’s gloves’ in his choice of a running mate in 2004, and that this time around, he won’t have to do it alone because this elections is too crucial to be left to his decision alone.
“We must do things properly. Atta-Mills can only nominate and when he nominates, he takes it to the council of Elders and then he takes it to the NEC, National Executive Committee, they will do their deliberation before he can say, this is the person I want and that has not been done.”
According to Mrs. Rawlings, Mrs. Betty Mould Iddrisu will bring the NDC more votes than either John Mahama or Alhaji Muhammed Mumuni, who ran with Mills in the 2004 elections.
“… Look at the three northern regions. Even with the NDC not getting any constituency in the Ashanti Region, the numbers that we brought on board if you take Bantama alone, we didn’t win there, don’t forget, we got only I think ‘twenty-something’ thousand and NPP got a ‘hundred-and-something thousand’…but if you look at the ‘twenty-something’ thousand, it equates to nine constituencies in the Northern region in numbers and politics is a game of numbers. We are talking about numbers here, and I know that if Betty is brought on board, we will be able to get many, many more numbers coming our way in the Ashanti area and the other Akan areas than any of the two men that you are suggesting,” she told JOY FM newscaster Akwasi Sarpong in an interview yesterday.
Mrs. Rawlings and other sponsors of the Betty-for-Veep campaign last Monday inched up their efforts to get Mills to backtrack on his decision to announce Mahama as his running mate, with some women activists being organized to storm the Kuku Hill, Osu, offices of Prof Mills to demand that he accedes to their request to head into the race with Mrs. Mould Iddrisu.
In their view, it’s Auntie Betty Mould Iddrisu or nobody.
Mrs. Rawlings perhaps summed it better on PEACE FM yesterday when asked what she and others like her would do if Prof. Mills refuses to yield to their request. ‘I won’t discuss that here but we will let him know our mind.
Meantime, reports suggest that some NDC youth in the Northern Regional capital, Tamale, went on rampage Monday defacing campaign posters of Prof Mills and damaging property belonging to the NDC amidst what they said was a protest over the yet-to-be- formally announced choice of John Mahama as Mill’s running mate.
The group, whose action led to the closure of the party office, is said to have insisted on a Moslem for the slot, stating their preference for Alhaji Muhammed Mumuni.
