NDP lists the wishes of former President Rawlings before his death

The National Democratic Party (NDP) has listed some points they have attributed to the late former President Jerry John Rawlings as some of his wishes before he passed away.

Speaking to the media on Monday, November 23, Alhaji Mohammed Frimpong, the Secretary-General of the NDP, stated that the NDP was honouring the wishes of Jerry John Rawlings in his absence to keep Rawlings’s legacy of ‘probity, accountability and transparency’.

He said one of the wishes of the late Jerry John Rawlings is not to let the current NDC leaders conduct his funeral rites.

Alhaji Frimpong explained that, even at Rawlings’s mother’s burial in Keta, he, Rawlings, was visibly pained and made his hurt known to John Mahama and the NDC for turning the solemn ceremony into an NDC event. “This was all captured on video.”

Listing some of the wishes further, Alhaji Frimpong questioned, “Would he [Rawlings] have wished for Voltarians to support a leader who said Voltarians were treating him as if he is the ‘Volta god’? The answer is no. Would he have wished for the cadres of the revolution to support a running mate who edited and produced a foreword of a book that desecrates his legacy and by extension, the legacy of all those who sacrificed for our nation? The answer is no.”

He also stated that Rawlings would have never wished for Mahama to continue leading the NDC and driving it further away from the principles and values on which he built the party. This, he indicated, was evident in the last interview he granted Kwaku Sakyi-Addo on Asaase Radio 99.5MHz, on July 12, 2020, when the late former president said he voted for his wife Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings and the NDP in the 2016 presidential election.

Alhaji Frimpong continued: "When he was alive, he chose not to be a part of John Mahama’s 2020 campaign and it would be disingenuous to seek to make him a part of the campaign now that he is gone. So, the 2020 elections are due in a matter of weeks. But Rawlings is gone. However, ask yourself as a cadre or as a comrade, ask yourself as you mourn his passing, ask yourself as someone who shared the pain that Mahama and his supporters inflicted on Rawlings when he was alive, ask yourself as someone who believes in what Rawlings stood for: would Rawlings want you to vote for a candidate that he thought was not fit to lead the party that he Rawlings founded?

"As a matter of fact, Jerry John Rawlings was eager to see Mahama lose in 2020 [election] because he believed Mahama and his cohorts had departed from the very ideals of probity and accountability upon which the NDC was formed. When Mahama was elected as the flagbearer of the NDC for the 2020 general [election], Rawlings was blunt about Mahama’s intentions. According to Rawlings, Mahama’s intentions are not to win the 2020 general [election]. His intentions are to simply hijack the NDC with his money in an attempt to show up again as the party’s flag bearer in 2024.”

Alhaji Frimpong further said: “…we can foresee NDC losing this election and 2021-22 ushering in a new era for the soul and control of the NDC. That fight is inevitable. John Mahama has, ironically, themed his 2020 campaign a “Rescue Mission.” This is ironic because many die-hard activists who mean well for the NDC are waiting for an opportunity after John Mahama’s defeat two weeks from now to begin, in earnest, the mission to rescue the NDC from John Mahama and the Ahwois.”

Alhaji Frimpong then appealed to the “true Rawlings loyalists and disgruntled disciples of probity and accountability” to join the NDP to work and honour what Rawlings believed in.

He said further that no true Rawlings believer would honour his memory by choosing a candidate who together with his backers, sowed discord between Rawlings and the party he founded and worked hard to discredit his wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings who was, “his lifelong defender, partner, counsellor, pillar, friend, confidante, comrade and soul-mate.”