Konadu: Mahama Gov’t should be tolerant and accept criticism

Former first Lady Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings has described as “unfair” and “not right”, the deluge of attacks on the General Secretary of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), Ivor Greenstreet over his blunt criticisms of the governing party and the Mahama administration.

Greenstreet has been called names after he told President John Mahama and Vice President Kwesi Amissah-Arthur in the face, during the National Democratic Congress’s national delegates’ congress in Kumasi last week that the Government has foisted on Ghanaians economic hardships and erratic power supply while officialdom feasted on the country’s kitty through corrupt means.

“Nobody is feeling your better Ghana”, Greenstreet bellowed at the President and his Government when he mounted the stage to deliver his party’s solidarity message to the NDC at the congress grounds.

Despite jeers, a defiant Greenstreet said: “…Currently nobody, I mean nobody is feeling your better Ghana.”

“Continuous ‘dumsor dumsor,’ corruption from top to bottom, left right inside out, and all the challenges you are facing [are] suffocating the Ghanaian people.”

He added: “We would have thought that perhaps you may have used an occasion like this to discuss policies, programmes and solutions to all the difficulties we are facing as a nation, but no, you chose today to share your Christmas gifts with each other.”

“Ghanaians are not happy at all. This ‘bronya’ is dry. Too too dry,” he told the President, adding: “The most painful thing of all is that you don’t care.”

“NDC continue, we are watching you, Ghana is watching you, do what you want to do, we also know what we’ll come and do…make sure you’ll elect executives who will be able to steer your parties affairs when you are in opposition. Boys abr3.”

President John Mahama, at the same congress, described Greenstreet’s comment as smacking of “incurable selective myopia.” Majority Leader Alban Bagbin told Starr FMin an interview on the congress ground that Greenstreet was demon-possessed, thus his comments. Also, presidential staffer Sam George wrote on Facebook that “apparently Ivor Greenstreet needed some elevation to see the better Ghana.”

George’s comment attracted a hailstorm of flak. He was condemned by the Ghana Federation of the Disabled, the CPP, the main opposition New Patriotic Party and hordes of social media users. He subsequently offered a conditional apology.

Mrs Rawlings told Nana Aba Anamoah in an exclusive interview on TV3 that the attacks and name-calling betrayed the Government’s intolerance to criticism.

“You invite people to come and give solidarity messages, you don’t say: ‘Say what I want to hear. You say bring me a solidarity message.’ Along the solidarity message people may say: ‘Ok, this is going this way, it’s going that way, so if you correct it, it will be better for all of us, so why would they insult him for coming out with his party’s position?

“I think it’s unfair, it’s not right. We should be tolerant and accept criticism. I mean you cannot sew everybody’s mouth in Ghana. I’m sorry. You may be gagging some people with money…but at the end of the day, is it good for mother Ghana? Is it good for us as individuals in the country? Is it good for you as rulers?” she wondered.