There are people in this world with limitless shamelessness, and Rawlings’ spokesman Kofi Adams is one of them. At a time when, amidst all the political insults and vilifications, an occasion has emerged to momentarily bring us together as a nation, Kofi Adams still finds a way to politicize an issue that everyone is happy to avoid. Kofi Adams must mature up and get on board the solidarity train because it appears the two previously feuding former presidents are sitting in its First Class
As President Kufuor’s week approached, even Adams’ boss President Rawlings was sobered enough to extend the closest thing to an olive branch we have witnessed between the two former presidents. At an event last week at the Indian High Commission, President Rawlings walked up to his successor and calmly told him that he has received his invitation and that he intends to honor it. The two reportedly held a short conversation in which President Rawlings was said to have submitted that it is time to end all these differences, and that they were no longer necessary.
Of course President Kufuor’s warm welcome to President Rawlings at the launching of his Foundation housed on the premises of University of Ghana has been widely reported and cheered as a welcomed indication of improved relations between the two former presidents. In light of all these developments, is this really the time for Kofi Adams to insert immaturity by launching a politically motivated, infantile excuse for why President Rawlings is yet to launch his own presidential library and accompanying foundation?
In an interview with Citi FM, Kofi Adams had this to say: “if the then NPP administration had not frustrated ex President Rawlings, he (Rawlings) would have set up a similar foundation by now.” He went on to claim that “This has been there all this while but you know the situation that President Rawlings found himself from 2001 to 2008. Even a University that he used an award to establish that wanted to honor him with a doctorate degree was rejected by the then administration, so everything was done to make it impossible for him to operate and put things together.” Since Kofi Adams cannot help himself, let us help him with a few perspectives he is too clearly intellectually challenged to see.
Most Ghanaians would agree that between 2001 and 2008, an ex-president Rawlings, focused on establishing a foundation and a presidential library would have had little time for daily verbal assaults on the Kufuor administration, and President Kufuor would have bent over backwards to facilitate such a project for him. But Adams would have us believe that the Kufuor administration preferred it the other way round. Furthermore, Kufuor has been out of office for exactly two years and nine months, a period he used to set his foundation and presidential library up. What was Rawlings doing during that time? Has the Mills administration been frustrating him as well?
Finally, we all remember how, under the watch of President Mills, President Kufuor was literally evicted by hoodlums from a property he requested to use as his post-presidency office. Even his ex-gratia has yet to be paid to him at the time when Rawlings’ ex-gratia is paid on schedule. Is this the Mills administration that has supposedly extended unwavering co-operation to the efforts of President Kufuor in setting up his foundation and presidential library?
What is obvious, and which many were happy to avoid discussing, is that the two former presidents possess widely different backgrounds and priorities. One prefers to give his so-called “boom speeches” criticizing everyone who ever led our country while the other prefers to spend his time augmenting his statesmanship. One’s lack of appreciation for education led him to close down universities on multiple occasions while the other presided over the building of multiple new universities to further education.
Thus the obvious explanation for why President Kufuor, who became an ex-president eight good years after President Rawlings had attained that title, became the first ever past president to establish a foundation and a presidential library is that he understands the importance associated with them. Conversely, President Rawlings, given his educational background and post-presidency activities, simply does not or did not understand their importance. So Kofi Adams can do all of us a favor and allow President Kufuor to have his day in the sun, especially since he is not gloating. When President Rawlings eventually emulates his successor, we would all line up to shower onto him the accolades he would then have earned.
