Former President Jerry John Rawlings, the man who founded the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), virtually moved party supporters to tears when he narrated what his family , especially former First Lady Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings has been going through at the hands of the Mills administration.
Addressing party supporters last Wednesday at the National Theatre as part of events to mark the 30th anniversary celebration of the 31st December Revolution, Mr. Rawlings said, “You can’t believe how mean our own people have been.”
He narrated how the Mills administration was sabotaging various projects being undertaken by the 31st December Women’s Movement headed by his wife, saying that “banks are impressed with what they’ve done and want to advance the money and you run behind and threaten the banks,” asking rhetorically, “are these our own people or not?”
He said some unseen faces had ensured that water supply to his wife’s house was cut off, compelling her to buy water from tankers.
Though he admitted that what he was talking about was not the purpose of the occasion, Mr. Rawlings said, “I want you to know that there is no peace.”
What seemed to pain him most was the fact that the government had allegedly scraped part of the road in front of her house, thereby generating a lot of dust, when they knew Mrs. Rawlings was asthmatic. “Don’t you realize all these things pain me?” he said.
In spite of the fact that Mrs. Rawlings won a case against the state over the sale of the Nsawam Cannery to the 31stDecember Women’s Movement, an organisation formed by his wife, Mr. Rawlings said, “we’ve come into office after a good fight, and hardly have any of these things been given…how long it’s taken to even pay money that is due them. Some you haven’t paid and yet you continue pretending, doing campaign on air as if you have.”
According to him, the movement set up an ultra-modern bakery in some parts of Accra where there were a few pot-holes on the road that led to the facility.
For this reason, Mr. Rawlings said his wife had to put in a request for government to repair the road to facilitate easy access to the place. However, the former President said “they came, scraped the road and it started the laterite smoke.”
This, according to him, had resulted in the closure of the bakery for the past two years, believing that all these were part of efforts by government to frustrate his family. He was of the conviction that President Mills and his men had failed to address the basic needs of the party members, some of who trooped to his house and office each passing day to ask for assistance.
“Today, there is another kind of suffering where it may be there but the difficulty of having to buy….the number of school children on my list.”
Though these were personal things he had to deal with, the founder of the ruling NDC noted that he had to spend about ¢50,000 within a period of five days during the Christmas festivities, all in an attempt to help party faithfuls who trooped to his office for assistance.
“I don’t have money, I don’t earn that much. Some of the monies that 31st and what not could also have been earning, they nearly became bankrupt supporting the NDC leadership,” he noted.
For these and other reasons, Mr. Rawlings said he was compelled by circumstances to spend the Christmas at his village house at Tefle in order to cool down the pressure on him with a word of advice for Mills and his ministers not to make people suffer this much.”
Mr. Rawlings said the party needed a ‘house cleaning exercise’ to rid the party of corrupt officials.
He said it was not too late for leadership of the party to go back to the grassroots and listen to the foot soldiers, stressing that “the level of despondency amongst our support base is largely due to the detachment of our leadership from the people.”
The NDC founder decried the manner in which President Mills and member of his administration were running the country with corruption at its highest peak.
“Many in the NDC leadership now believe they do not owe any explanation to the populace,” he concluded.
