Why Rawlings hated NPP's property-owning democracy ideology - Former aide explains

Late president Jerry John Rawlings founded the National Democratic Congress (NDC) on the ideological basis of being a social democratic party.

He rooted the foundations of the party on the ideals of probity and accountability which ideals started from the revolutionary days when he was leader of a military junta that took power in 1981.

Rawlings it has emerged was strictly opposed to the ideology of the main political opponent, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), which party touts itself as a property-owing party.

Fritz Baffour, a former minister and close associate of the Rawlings family has revealed why the late leader despised the term, more so after the NDC lost the 2000 election to the NPP.

Rawlings believed that as a developing country, the idea of property-owning was against the interest of the country generally and the poor in particular.

Fritz was speaking in an interview with Kafui Dey on the 3rd anniversary of Rawlings' death on November 12, 2020.

Below is a transcript of their exchange:

Fritz: He was a man of the people and this was a property owning party but he realised that there was hope because this was a democratic process and there was a chance that we would win power back.

Kafui Dey: Did that term irk him? Property-owning democracy.

Fritz: Yeah, very much so, because he believed that this was developing country and so everybody had to have the opportunity of being succesful at whatever they were doing.

If you had a property owning democracy, they'd be more selfish with the fact that they are looking for their properties, they'd protect their properties against human beings.

'Property Owning Democracy' - a term that annoyed Rawlings a lot

Check first reply for full video pic.twitter.com/xBxh2vtvjm

— Kafui Dey (@KafuiDey) November 13, 2023