NDC Brainstorms on JJ's Role

THERE is growing concern among national executives and leading members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), over what role the former President, J. J. Rawlings should play in the Party’s 2008 campaign, THE SUN has learnt. According to party insiders who spoke to the paper on condition of anonymity, the leadership of the leading opposition party are divided over exact role that the founder of the party, Rawlings, should be assigned.

“Our problem is that if care is not taken and our founder is allowed to take the central stage or take over Prof. Fiifi Atta Mills’ campaign as he did in the previous elections, opposition newspapers and our enemies would turn his good intentions into bad and set a campaign of negative propaganda against us,” a leading Party guru told THE SUN.

The NDC top-notch was of the view that, despite the selfless efforts of the party’s founder towards sustaining democracy in Ghana, many people still do not understand him and would want to derail his plans at any given chance. “We are going all out come the 2008 General Elections and as a result we are putting our house in order to weed out anything that would militate against our march to the Castle,” the NDC big-wig told THE SUN.

According to him, because of the active role of the former President Rawlings in the 2004 General Election, the NPP used the negative propaganda to create an impression amongst voters that, it was Rawlings and not Prof. Mills who was running the show.

“If you go back to the newspaper publications in the run-up to the 2004 elections you will realize that, instead of focusing on issues and Prof. Mills, the papers joined forces with the ruling party and created an impression, as if it was ex-President Rawlings who was running.

THE SUN gathered that even though the NDC still believes that Rawlings is a pillar in the scheme of things, there was widespread fear that his role would be mistaken and rather use to hit back at the party as occurred in the past elections.

It will be recalled that during the run-up to the 2004 elections, the former President took a central stage in the campaign leading to bad press against the party, when his campaign team was involved in a confrontation in Upper East, which some insiders thought did not help the cause of the party. That is approximately four years ago.

Today in 2007, the NDC is still struggling to identify a proper role for its founder come 2008 elections, which some party faithfuls consider as the battle for survival.