Why Ex-President Rawlings remains the most important NDC member thus far

I never anticipated for a minute that I will wake up one day to witness a deep seated fragmentations within the NDC Party, in the sense that some of us were made to understand that conflict is not in the NDC’s lexicon.

Shockingly, however, the ongoing bickering within the NDC Party portrays a different story contrary to what the NDC faithful made us to believe.

In fact, until their recent tug of war, we were made to believe that conflict is alien to the NDC Party.

Obviously, we were deceived by the NDC faithful. Indeed, their heated conflict is disastrously disintegrating the party.

In actual fact, they have been living in a denial all this while. They managed to conceal the insidious conflict whilst in government.

Then the humiliating 2016 election defeat rekindled the concealed conflict.

Apparently, a section of the aggrieved supporters could not hide their arousing disgust over the unpardonable events which led to the humiliating 2016 election loss.

The prominent among the disgruntled supporters is the Ex-President and founder of the party, J. J. Rawlings.

The extremely aggrieved former President Rawlings has since been aiming accusing fingers at the non-performing and allegedly corrupt NDC leadership for the election defeat.

Somehow, Ex-President Rawlings’s relentless accusations invariably infuriated the brassbound NDC faithful, who discourteously and uncharacteristically decided to revenge by tearing their founder, Ex-President Rawlings into pieces.

Consequently, the disgusted supporters came out and vehemently repudiated such allegations, and, rather accused Rawlings as the one who has been indulging in corrupt practices.

To me, all that Ex-President Rawlings has been grouching about is perfectly in order.

I must confess, though, Ex-President Rawlings’s advice is in order. Indeed, there is nothing imprudent about his remarks on the rampant sleazes and corruptions.

So, where is the justification for all the abuses which are being directed at the Ex-President Rawlings?

Tell me, is Ex-President Rawlings not right for asserting that the erstwhile Mahama administration “squandered many opportunities to clean up and to restore the June 4 principles in the party?”

For argument sake, let us even agree that the old man Rawlings sometimes goes overboard with his remarks, and is that a justification for the NDC faithful to go to an extent of abusing the very person whose ideals gave birth to a party (NDC) which has made them somebodys?

Let us be honest, why would anyone squall and upbraid Ex-President Rawlings for advising: “Ladies and Gentlemen, nobody is saying don’t make money but make it good and clean but not some of the ones that I know, sickening, the kind of greed, selfishness, look at where it landed us.”

In fact, it beggars belief that a section of the NDC brassbound supporters would insult their controversial founder for calling a spade as a spade.

And given the gargantuan corruptions in the previous administration, it will only take a sycophant and unpatriotic individual to criticise anyone who shows concern.

Let us be honest, some of the criticisms that former President Rawlings has been receiving from the disgruntled NDC Party loyalists are somewhat unfair.

As a matter of fact, it is needless to seek to tear Ex-President Rawlings to shreds for showing concern over the ostensive corrupt practices within the NDC Party.

After all, the vineyard news and other sources have it that the Professor Kwesi Botchwey Election Fact-finding Committee’s report has indicted former President Mahama.

The sources have it that former President Mahama contributed largely to the NDC’s 2016 humiliating election defeat.

Apparently, there are those who share Ex-President Rawlings’s sentiments that Ex-President Mahama’s woeful errors in judgement and the gargantuan corruptions accounted for the NDC’s 2016 election loss.

Nevertheless, the supporters of Ex-President Mahama do not accept such a view point and have gone to an extent of spurning Ex-President Rawlings and challenging him to evidence his claim as a founding father of the NDC Party.

Ironically, Dr Obed Asamoah, an NDC Party stalwart, has publicly told Ghanaians that former President Rawlings is not a founder of the party, contrary to their party constitution.

Dr Asamoah, however, maintained that Rawlings could not have been the founder of the party, in the sense that he was an active army officer during the registration of the NDC Party.

Truth be told, the NDC apologists are committing a political suicide, or to put it euphemistically, they are living in a denial for refusing to accept the fact that former President Rawlings is really revered by the foot soldiers more than any other member of the party.

If the disgruntled brassbound NDC supporters care to know, it was the ideals of former President Rawlings that gave birth to the NDC Party.

More importantly, Ex-President Rawlings has a lot of supporters in his corner.

It would thus seem unthinkable for anybody to suggest that former President Rawlings is currently irrelevant in the NDC Party.

As a matter of fact, former President Rawlings still commands respect among the foot soldiers within the party.

And, most likely, some loyalists of former President Rawlings’s will be aggrieved over the NDC party apparatchiks relentless impishness towards him.

Unfortunately, however, the NDC’s boisterous supporters who are not privy to their party’s history have been upbraiding Rawlings all the time for expressing his grievances over the rot in his party.

Let us face it, the ongoing tussle between Mahama faction and Rawlings faction will not inure to the benefit of the NDC Party.

In sum, the persistent disagreements between the factions could only deepen the cleavage and thereby keeping NDC in opposition for a very long time.