Rawlings warned NDC of defeat – Sly Mensah

Former President Jerry John Rawlings actually warned the National Democratic Congress (NDC) that if it contested the run-off in the December 2000 presidential polls, it certainly would lose to the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Sylvester Mensah, Chief Executive of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) has revealed in his autobiography.

This revelation is the exact opposite of hitherto held perceptions that Rawlings did not want to concede defeat in 2000 and had angrily stormed the home of the then NDC candidate Atta Mills of blessed memory to protest that the later was consuming tea with avocado pear and bread when the party was losing the elections.

Mr. Mensah noted that prior to the run-off, there was a high-powered meeting attended by the movers and shakers of the NDC at the time; and that at the meeting, former President Rawlings categorically told the party to concede defeat and save Ghana the cost of organizing a run-off between the then candidates, Atta Mills and John Agyekum Kufuor of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) because there was no way the NDC would win the run-off.

“President Rawlings, however, demonstrated that he had long foreseen our defeat, and although he could not always be right, on this particular occasion, he was spot on. I remember when the party regrouped to try to strategise how we were going to go about the second round, he was of the view that we should not even bother; that we should save the country the cost of another run because he foresaw a win for the NPP.

“There was a huge outcry against this call of his, with my voice amongst the loudest protestors. He calmed us down by saying that we could go ahead and still contest, and he would support us, even though he was not sure we could make it. His intervention was merely to calm things down so that it did not seem as though he was abandoning the party to its fate in that difficult circumstance,” Sylvester Mensah noted in his book entitled, ‘In the Shadows of Politics: Reflections from My Mirror.’

Mr. Mensah highlighted other intra-party antics that were happening in the NDC at the constituency, regional and national levels at the time, and the changing attraction of the contemporary political product.

The 153-page must-read book, In the Shadows of Politics: Reflections from My Mirror recounts the life, escapades and exploits of Sylvester Mensah, the man, scholar, technocrat, politician and family man in a “raw” fashion.