The former First lady, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings, has stated that a distinction must be drawn between democratic rule and revolutionary rule.
?Democratic rule is democratic rule and revolution is revolution,? she declared in a radio interview on Tuesday. She said that even though there were excesses that had to be admitted and condemned in the revolutionary era, ?maybe if we didn?t have a revolutionary era we wouldn?t have gotten where we are now.?
The interview was on Radio Gold?s morning drive programme dubbed 60 minutes. She said the alleged millions of dollars in a Swiss account said to be for her should be located for her to be able to finish their house because anytime the price of cement went up, they had to stop building and start calculating again to see how they would manage.
?It has not been easy for us. So where are the millions? I always say that I will not mind receiving those millions at all. They should tell me where they are; I will love to have a little bit of it to make us a little bit comfortable. Maybe I could pay Mr. Smith,? she added. Asked of her view of the media, she said there was ?a creeping dictatorship? of the media side by side with the dictatorship of the government and nothing was being done about it. She said there was fear in the society and ?replacing empowerment with fear does not help?.
But Mrs. Rawlings said not everybody in the press was biased. There were certain individuals who were very contentious about making sure that this country actually was not derailed to a certain level and there were others who always had a bottom line. ?And there are some who have no idea of what bottom line even means, let alone to have it?, she asserted, adding, ?and they are leading this country nowhere because they have not always been above board themselves.? ?If you want to criticize somebody make sure that you are also above board. But you cannot be doing one thing and tell others to do another thing?. She said that there were serious issues that needed to be addressed but which had been thrown over board.
?I was buying cement in the NDC time at ?17,800 and there was hue and cry that the price was too much. I agree it was expensive, but if today it is ?53,000 and you tell me that inflation has been brought down, I don?t understand what it means. We are looking at figures and not listening to speeches.? She said that she had to take a number of newspapers to court because ?it was going way below the line.?
She said they accused her of being caught with cocaine ?but today you have cocaine smugglers as part of government and nothing is said.? She therefore went to court to clear her name and her children?s name because good name was better than riches, she said and added that some people had made it a point that they would make sure ?some of us never have a good name.?
I Used My Position Positively ? Nana Konadu
Mrs Konadu Agyeman Rawlings says she endured the pressures of the early days of the 31st December revolution in order that she may better the lot of especially the Ghanaian woman.She said she had to endure the lack of almost everything including water, electricity, road and even food in the early days of the coming into office of her husband to the point where her last two children accuse her of ?not feeding them well? to attain the height and stature of their older siblings.
Nana Konadu who became first lady at age 35 told Radio Gold that she did not personally benefit from any of the transactions she did on behalf of the women and children of the country neither did she personally manage any of the funds since whatever money they made was to benefit the entire country rather than an individual.
Though she acknowledged that her position as a first lady was enough to facilitate access to loans for the movement, she felt she ?was just the wife of a president and I used my position extensively and positively.?
Mrs Rawlings talked about a loan the movement secured from the Chinese Fund for a cocoa processing factory which has been left idle because the NDC government is out of power.
She also recounted an over 6 million dollars loan facility the Movement secured from the OPEC Fund for the construction of 20 hospitals and another from ADB which she says government had either failed to acknowledge receipt of or deliberately refused to utilize. ?The money is in town, the items are in, I have reports on them but the factory is sitting there idle, the minister doesn?t see his way clear.
Then, ?we are talking about a golden age of business and you are killing businesses that belong to people who don?t belong to your party.?
According to her even the 31st December Movement did not receive any special help form the government even under the NDC and that anything they got was as a result of their own hard work, including going to China to negotiate with the Prime Minister and the president. ?My position was used positively for the country, not for myself.?
Presently to her, everything looks like an agenda to bring her reputation into disrepute. ?I?ve been accused of having, em, mi ni I spoke Ga. Em, gold what?s it, jewelry shops in Geneva and London, I?ve been accused of em, so many things, so many things I mean I cannot even talk about it.? ?But what stops people from checking issues? ?I have been accused that I have millions of dollars in Swiss accounts and yet we can?t even finish our house??
