My relationship with Rawlings not broken - Asiedu Nketia

The General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia, has refuted suggestions that he does not have a good relationship with former President Jerry John Rawlings.

Mr Asiedu, while welcoming back Dr Obed Asamoah, a friend, and later foe, of Mr Rawlings, into the fold of the NDC at an event at the Arts Centre in Accra in 2012, had told the former Attorney-General: “Now the barking dog whose actions forced you out of the NDC no longer exists, so I would have been surprised if you had continued to stay outside…”

Many interpreted the comments as a dig at the longest serving leader of the country who founded the NDC and led it to two electoral victories before leaving power in 2001.

But responding to critics, General Mosquito, as he is popularly called, said there was no love lost between Mr Rawlings and him, emphasising that his relations with Mr Rawlings remain cordial and “it is wrong” for anyone to think of any bad blood between them.

He indicated that he related to Mr Rawlings as the founder of the party “much the same way I relate to the National Chairman and [former] President Mahama as the immediate past leader of the party”.

“You don’t need to be friends with people to work with them,” he said on Starr FM’s Morning Starr in an interview with Francis Abban.