Rawlings is a disgrace to Ghana

Once again someone made the mistake of giving former president Jerry John Rawlings a microphone, and as customary for him, with nothing constructive to say due to his limited sophistication, he launched vile and untruthful attacks on “previous administration,” which is his cowardly way of referring to the Kufour administration. We call the attention of all Ghanaians to the fact that while atrocities committed under Rawlings’ administration, be they corruption, human right abuses, or nepotism, exceeded those of any administration in our nation’s history, it is especially crass for the former president to make it his mantra to accuse others what he is in fact guilty of.

Speaking at the International Catholic Union of the Press in Burkina Faso, the former president alleged that a Ghanaian journalist was being paid 10,000 dollars a month to do the dirty work of a corrupt government. He however did not name the journalist and the regime. When the office of former president John Agyekum Kufour refuted the allegations, Mr. Rawlings’ office sought to engage in a war of words by resorting to name-calling. Amidst all the noise, however, we at NPP-USA seek to present the facts and leave Ghanaians to draw their own conclusions.

*First on thievery.* By Rawlings’ own admission, he was paid a salary of $350 monthly. If that is true, and he was able to save 100% of his monthly salary (which is unrealistic), he would have saved $79,800 over 19 years. Throw in a generous $100,000 for per diems for his foreign travels, and he should be worth $179,800. Supposing former president Rawlings was a shrewd businessman and invested this amount wisely, we can generously assume that he doubled that amount. That brings his total honest worth to $359,600. Let us again generously assume that former First lady Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings somehow managed to supplement her husband’s earnings by adding $200,000 over that same period. In this scenario, even including his continued ex-gratia remittances during Kufuor’s eight-year tenure, the Rawlings should be worth no more than $920,000 today. This also factors in the increment to $4,500 monthly that he has been receiving from 2005 to date.

How then can the Rawlings family account for their current net worth of over $15 million, including foreign private education for their four children, their mansions around the country, their luxury boats, horses, and ranches especially when Flt Lt Rawlings came into national leadership with a completely empty pocket? He had no functional profession, no savings by his own admission, and no property ownership. By his own admission, he was so broke that he used to buy “yoke garri’ on credit. He also admits to decorating his living room with seats he stole from an abandoned air force jet.

More importantly, how can Rawlings accuse Kufour of thievery in spite of the following? Prior to ascending to the presidency, John Agyekum Kufour was a successful lawyer. Unlike Rawlings, Kufour was also a successful businessman with many investments before his presidency. He built his own house in the airport residential area where he lived before, throughout his eight-year presidency because the Rawlings administration had turned The Castle into a dilapidated mess, and after his presidency. Kufour renovated his house only for security purposes to protect the presidency. Kufuor’s children were all educated before he became president. In fact, two of his children lived and worked to educate themselves in the United States.

What Ghanaians must ponder is this: Two people come to the presidency from such starkly different paths. One was already wealthy and the other was destitute. After their respective tenures as president, the previously destitute one is now wealthier than the one who was already wealthy before. Given what relative scant salary that they were both paid as president, which one of them STOLE MONEY FROM THE PEOPLE? THE PREVIOUSLY DESTITUTE RAWLINGS, OR THE PREVIOUSLY WEALTHY KUFUOR? This MUST become a national dialogue for Ghanaians to get to the bottom of this shameful tirade from Rawlings so that we can move on to better things.

*Second on Corruption*. Tsatsu Tsikata was one of the architects of the Fast Track Court. He used it to prosecute those he claimed had caused financial loss to the state. Yet when the Attorney General under Kufuor’s administration attempted to use the same Fast Track Court to prosecute Tsikata for causing financial loss to the state, he argued that the court had no jurisdiction over his case. Eventually, however, he was convicted and sent to prison. Tsikata was one of several officials from the Rawlings administration who were proven to have engaged in corrupt practices while in office. Even recently, a British court proved beyond any reasonable doubt that three high level officials from the Rawlings administration accepted bribes while in government, justifying the convictions by the Kufour administration.

In contrast, all claims by Rawlings himself and other NDC elements that former officials under the Kufour administration were corrupt have failed to go beyond mere allegations. The current Attorney General has tried several times to prosecute past officials from the Kufour administration only to be greeted with judicial failure. Frustrated by their inability to prove their lies in court, the NDC has now resorted to intimidating the Judiciary in the hopes of substantiating their false claims in court. The fact is that these allegations cannot be fairly proven in a court of law. Where then is the justification for Rawlings to continue to make these wild claims when corrupt practices under his tenure have been proven in courts of law in both Ghana and the United Kingdom? This is a classic case of a pig calling someone ugly.

The former president also accused the Kufour administration of deepening poverty in Ghana because of its corrupt nature. When it comes to deepening poverty in Ghana, no one comes close to Rawlings. He initiated what is known in Ghana’s history as the “Rawlings Chain.” Back in 1984, there was such abject poverty and starvation in Ghana that the neck bones of most Ghanaians protruded out forming what looked like a chain around their necks. Unemployment, inflation, interest rates, and all financial indicators of our country regressed to record low levels. In fact, not only was the Rawlings administration corrupt, he compounded the corruption with ineptitude that only a half-literate leader who violently suppressed any dissenting ideas can exhibit.

Again in contrast, the Kufuor administration’s successful fight against poverty has been globally highlighted. Ghana, under Kufuor was the only African country to have met the tenets and milestones of the Millennium Challenge goal of halving poverty by 2015. According to assessments made, not by the Kufuor administration, but by a United Nations team, the percentage of Ghanaians living below the poverty line dropped from 35 when he took over the presidency, to less than 25. Today that progress has been replaced with a regression. Rawlings must be ashamed of himself whenever he opens his mouth to accuse another president of deepening poverty.

*Third on Press Interference.* Rawlings said “we can only institute good governance if some members of the media do not become pawns of governments and other selfish business and political groups - a disease that is not unique only to Africa but across the world.” “The French Revolution, the Protestant Revolution, the 31st December Revolution in my country Ghana all came about as a result of the suppression of the truth and the attempt to hide facts which are obvious to the people,” he stated. NPP-USA can believe that Rawlings did not put any journalists on his payroll to publish complimentary stories about his government. He simply did not have to – he just had them killed when they published stories he did not like.

This press intimidation allowed Rawlings himself to hide the truth about many murders he committed or had committed. When he was forced to tow the democracy line, and he realized that he could not merely kill journalists that he did not like, he quickly had his rubber-stamping Parliament enact a Libel Law that continued the suppression of press freedom even during the fourth republic.

If Kufour wanted to monopolize the media with complimentary publications about his government, he could simply have kept the Libel Law that Rawlings enacted. Instead, that was the first of the social shackles that Kufour threw out when he became president. And he knew that by abolishing the Libel Law, he was opening the floodgates for uncomplimentary publications about his government. But he did it anyway. That is why it makes no sense whatsoever that Kufour would pay journalists to write complimentary stories about his government.

It is almost blasphemous for Rawlings to compare his December 31st Coup to the French Revolution and others. NPP-USA wishes to educate Rawlings about the fundamental differences between a military coup and a revolution. The French revolution was a popular uprising of the masses that overthrew a decadent monarchy and replaced it with an enduring democratic system. Rawlings overthrew a democratically elected government, accused it of corruption and replaced it with a more corrupt and dictatorial government. The lasting change that Rawlings’ 31st December putsch brought was the transformation of Rawlings and his family from a peasant-like status to a filthy rich and corrupt military dictator. Rawling’s attempt to compare his coup that overthrew, Dr. Hilla Liman, the first person from the North to lead the country, to the glorious French Revolution is another demonstration of his trait as a pathological liar with grandiose delusion.

A few months ago, NPP-USA sent an open invitation to former president Rawlings to openly debate corruption in Ghana, and which administration is the most culpable. It is noteworthy that he has refused to honor that invitation to engage in this all-important national dialogue. Rather, he prefers the one-way communication that he is accustomed to so that he can use it to spread lies about the former NPP government, which has been one of the best, if not the best our country has had the fortune to be governed by. We will not relent in our efforts to expose the truth about the atrocities that Ghanaians endured under the 19-year dictatorial rule Rawlings imposed upon us. The time has come for Rawlings to answer to his crimes. May be that is when he would finally stop calling others what he himself should be called – a corrupt, inept thief of a leader.