Mrs. Rawlings’ Journey into Political Oblivion

Mr. Kofi Adams, NDC Deputy Secretary-General and spokesman for the Rawlings family, was reported (Ghanaweb, 15 April 2011) as saying that: “Apathy is now a huge problem in the party that threatens to derail the NDC’s chances at the polls,” fearing that the malaise among “party executives has reached a crescendo, a situation which could harm the fortunes of the party in the future.” To describe what is happening now in the NDC as “apathy” is a gross understatement. The situation prevailing there appears to be nothing short of internecine trench warfare. I am just curious that Mr. Adams volunteered no information in his statement as to what the Rawlingses thought were the causes of the “apathy” in the party. I will spare his blushes.

On or about 9 May 2009, I posted an article on the Ghanaweb, titled “Rawlings: 2012 is sooner than You Think!” I wrote that piece as a reaction to Mr. Rawlings’s no-holds-barred public criticisms of President Atta Mills’ appointments, governmental structures, perceived tardiness to prosecute former president Kufour and his officials for corruption, and those involved in the murder of Ya-Na Yakubu Andani II, etc., etc. Rawlings fired the first salvo of his long assault on the occasion of the events organized by the Government to mark President Mills’ first 100 days in office. He upped the ante the following week in a speech at the Kwame Nkrumah University in Kumasi, titled “Ghana’s Democracy—the Way Forward”. He has continued his bombardment with increasing intensity ever since. So, it seems pretty obvious that Rawlings’ unremitting public criticisms of Professor Mills since he took office in January 2009 has dismayed, angered or alienated some of the party executives and gravely damaged the party’s electoral chances in 2012. The Rawlingses know that. But open admission would portray them as vindictive wreckers. That is one image they would want to keep hidden from Ghanaians.

In that article, I took the view, contrary to some pundits, that Rawlings’s relentlessly ranting and raving criticisms, which went far beyond political decency and exercise of right of freedom of speech, could not be explained as skirmishes for another coup, least of all against an NDC government. I thought they were nothing more than the tantrum of a spoilt child who had hoped for but was denied his favourite candy after contributing so much to secure NDC victory in 2008. My thinking was that they were Rawlings’ way of paying back President Mills for denying him space to govern as co-president. Looking at the situation from a broader perspective, I warned Mr. Rawlings that his public fratricidal criticisms of President Atta Mills must be music to the ears of the NPP and that he was seriously jeopardizing his party’s electoral fortunes in 2012. In a brave effort to get him off President Mills’ back and, of course, for his own good, I took the liberty to advise him to channel his energy and time more productively into writing his autobiography. (I was sure then, and now, that his book would make a fascinating reading here in Ghana and abroad, if he told it all; publishers would scramble to publish it; handsome royalties would flow in to swell his bank account, and, of course, reviewers too would have a field day.)

Honestly, I never suspected the events of the last few days when Mrs. Rawlings would declare her intention to run against a sitting NDC president. What sense can one make of all these? Rawlings may deny it. But one cannot help but conclude that his obsessive, sometimes cruel or totally irrational, criticisms of President Atta Mills’ performance in two short years was all a big con or theatrical act, scripted and staged, with no other purpose than to create a wave of disaffection within the party, especially among the so-called foot soldiers, on whose crest his wife would ride high to challenge President Mills for the presidency.

Let’s be candid about it and call a spade a spade. Rawlings knew exactly what he was up to. He is no political novice. He has been in the business long enough to foresee the consequences of his actions for the NDC, as a party, and its electoral chances in 2012. I am genuinely very saddened that Rawlings would love power to the extent that he would stoop so low as to hide behind his wife’s skirt to destroy his own party and its government just to position himself to rule Ghana again as his wife’s ventriloquist after nearly 20 years in power. With his wife ensconced in the Castle or Flagstaff House, Rawlings would have presidential powers that Atta Mills denied him to go after all those he accused of corruption; in a Stalinist fashion purge judges he dislikes, civil servants and other government appointees he suspects of being NPP sympathisers. Ghanaians would once again come face to face with the ugly repressive years of the AFRC and PNDC era. (Refugee asylum countries, here we come!)

Indubitably, Mrs. Rawlings as Ghanaian is legally qualified in terms of our Constitution to run for president, as do millions of other Ghanaians out there. But there are several other qualifications outside the Constitution that an aspirant to that office must have. I call them “political qualifications”. Even if Mrs. Rawlings ran out a winner in Sunyani in July, she would still need to meet those political tests nationally to stand any chance of beating Nana Akuffo Addo in 2012. In other words, is she electable? Perhaps, I can best explain the meaning of the word “electable” by posing a series of general criteria questions. Is the candidate a political asset to the party or to Ghana? Is he/she a national figure? Does he/she have national, as opposed to ethnic or parochial, appeal? Does he/she command respect? Does he/she have what it takes to run a country? Does he/she have integrity? Is he/she perceived as a unifying force in politically and ethnically polarized Ghana? And, does he/she have unblemished record?

My assessment of Mrs. Rawlings’ presidential candidacy in terms of those general criteria is that she is not electable. Nana Akuffo Addo would trounce her. She is a national figure by virtue of her position as a former First Lady. She is also president of 31st December Women’s Movement (DWM), a women’s wing of the NDC, which also gives her a high national profile. She has for a very long time spear-headed many women’s voluntary development projects throughout Ghana. She must also have acquired appreciable managerial skills from running those projects. But those qualifications are not enough for the electorate to warm up to her. She carries too much heavy baggage both as an individual and Mr. Rawlings’ wife.

Here are some specific reasons why I believe she is unelectable. First, I think she is no longer the prized NDC asset that she once was. The manner in which her husband set out and unremittingly undermined President Atta Mills and weakened their own party electorally in their pursuit of power to rule Ghana again was pure dirty politics. Most Ghanaian voters can see through that. She cannot convincingly distance herself from her husband’s political plot against President Mills of which she is the main beneficiary. They have been the cause of schism in the party. They have alienated some committed and uncommitted NDC voters. The question those voters will be asking is: where is the integrity her husband constantly lectures President Mills about, and why should they trust such people with our votes? (I hope we people from the Volta Region will wake up for once and ask questions and not allow successive NDC governments to take us for granted.)

Secondly, one of Rawlings’ constant criticisms of President Atta Mills is his purported failure to prevent or stop corruption in his own government and to go single-mindedly after former president John Kufour and members of his administration. Well, Rawlings executed Rear-Admiral Amedume by firing squad for taking a bank loan of 50,000 old Ghana Cedis. Amedume’s crime, according to Rawlings, was that he used his position to obtain the loan! Rawlings raised the bar for corruption that high. He himself ruled Ghana for nearly 20 years. Blatant corruption flourished on his watch. His ministers, party functionaries and people close to him profited corruptly from the disinvestment of Ghana’s national corporations and other state assets, the Keta sea defence project contracts, etc. What did Rawlings do? Absolutely zero! I am not justifying corruption by any means. The point I am making is that given his own inaction against corruption, Rawlings has no moral authority criticizing President Atta Mills in the manner he has done for failing to rid Ghana of corruption in two years. It is rank hypocrisy. If Rawlings now believes Ghana should revert to the “ Amedume rule”, he should say so publicly by putting it in his wife’s election manifesto, and we shall see where the chips fall.

Thirdly, I must confess that I don’t know Mrs. Rawlings from close quarters, and most voters don’t know either. It may well be that she is as sweet and gentle as a spring lamb in her private life. In terms of public appeal and personality, however, she is not in the same league as Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Graca Machel or the late Anne Jaggae. More often than not she comes across as a divisive, aggressive rabble-rouser and “greedy bastard”, if I may borrow her husband’s ill-considered choice of words. (The haggling with Government over rebuilding of their burnt-down official residence is common knowledge: the palaver over the architectural drawings, the contractors, etc., all at the taxpayers’ expense, while the “ordinary folks” and “foot soldiers” fester in the slums of Nima and elsewhere in Ghana.) Mrs. Rawlings’ public language and posturing are indicative of a bitter and vindictive individual hell bent on settling old scores. That is not the kind of person I would vote for as president of my country. Ghana does not need another Rawlings’ repressive and autocratic regime through surrogate wife! If I may paraphrase Nelson Mandela: never, never again in the history of Ghana shall we allow another Rawlings’ presidency, whatever form or shape it may take. At this point in time, Ghanaians need most peace and personal freedom to develop as one people, one nation under one flag. I seriously do not believe that Mrs. Rawlings is the sort of person who can give us that.

Lastly, Mrs. Rawlings and her husband have too many skeletons in their cupboard to be trusted with presidential power again. Honestly, that woman is frightening. She always reminds me of Shakespeare’s tormented Lady Macbeth, struggling in vain after the bloody deed, to wash her hands clean of the blood of the three murdered judges one of whom was a nursing mother like her! She couldn’t care less what happened to that orphaned baby. Could she? No, she couldn’t.

The Rawlingses and their supporters have done incalculable damage to the NDC’s internal cohesion, image and its electoral chances in 2012. It is perfectly conceivable that the 8 July Sunyani Conference might strike some damage-control or face-saving deal which would enable Mrs. Rawlings to step back from the brink with some dignity. Even if she did, President Mills would still have great difficulty winning in 2012. The damage has already been done. The NPP would have to do something extraordinarily or calamitously stupid to squander their enormous good fortune in the person of Rawlings and wife. In a perverse sort of way, I would like to see Mrs. Rawlings win the NDC nomination. Ghanaians would have the utmost satisfaction of voting her into political oblivion where she and her husband would enjoy anonymity and irrelevance. That day would be greater for Ghana than 6 March 1950!

Cedric Tsuo