Mr. Victor Smith, special assistant to the former President, Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings, has said that the former president is gradually getting worried and patently sad at the developments in his party.
According to Smith, who doubles as the public relations director at office of the former President, Rawlings feels sad because he believes that money should not be used as a bait or serve as the motivating factor in informing people’s decision to vote for a particular candidate in an election.
He stressed that the former president believes that people should not sell their conscience by taking money to vote for a particular candidate.
Speaking to a popular radio morning programme in Accra, last week, Mr. Smith president contemplated leaving the party if Dr. Kwesi Botchwey won the primaries at the party’s congress in December, stressed that the NDC was not built on money given its background in the revolutionary era.
According to Victor Smith, Rawlings believes that party political structure, and decision, making on a voting day, should rather be based on commitment to a cause, with an aim to see to the satisfaction of the aspiration of the broad masses who want a better life.
“Rawlings is sad,” he said, adding that people claim he has been doing “vision politics, while the dominant view is that this time money is used to do politics.”
The former president according to Victor Smith, doesn’t believe in money politics.
“He thinks that where the NDC had come from, during the PNDC days, it did not take money for people to join it “we did not use money to get people to join the revolution nor to join the NDC in 1992, so why should we use money now” he questioned.
According to Smith, it’s no secret that Dr. Botchwey has been doing money politics in the NDC, given the way he has been paying money left and right, obviously to lure delegates to vote for him.”
When his attention was drawn to the fact that, Prof. Mills has also been paying “knocking fees “on his campaign trail to the regions and the constituencies, Mr. Smith replied: “We have heard it, but money should not be the case, or the deciding factor, it should rather be party commitment, and commitment to a cause.
“After all, how much money can you pay, if you give somebody ?10 million, it would by all means get finished.”
He called for the abolition of financial inducement from the body politic of the party, saying “we shouldn’t use money to do politics. “We (NDC) don’t do money politics unlike those political parties who used money to induce the people to vote for them.” Victor Smith was quoted as saying.
He, therefore, called on NDC members, particularly the delegates to the congress, to resist any attempt to influence them with money.
Asked which of the two contestants, (Dr. Botchwey or Prof. Mills,) he thought the former president was supporting, Mr. Smith replied, “oh, it’s obvious. Although he has not asked me to say this, I know he would prefer a Mills candidature to a Botchwey’s.”
Hear him: “I believe that the broad masses and majority of the NDC, would go for Prof. Mills” and pointed out that Rawlings had not asked him to say that, but he believed that the broad masses of the party are for Mills, in view of the good work he has done before.
Asked if Mills, should lose to Botchwey, what would happen to the party, Smith said Rawlings would remain in the party because he’s the founding father. He’s the chairman of the Council of elders and retorted: “why should Rawlings leave the party to allow somebody to take over? He’s not leaving today, tomorrow or any other day. This is because he can’t allow somebody to edge him out of the party on account of money politics,” he stressed.
“In fact, Rawlings has never told anybody that he wants to leave the party,” he said. He was confident that the NDC would win the 2004 elections in view of the fact that the people who who voted the NPP, into power are now singing sankofa “Go Back For it”.
