Rawlings losing grip on NDC - Lecturer

Former President Jerry John Rawlings is losing his grip on the National Democratic Congress (NDC) of which he is the founder, Dr Eric Opoku Mensah, a lecturer in Political Communication and Presidential Rhetoric at the University of Cape Coast (UCC), has said.

Analysing the influence of the former president in the current NDC, Dr Opoku Mensah told Moro Awudu on Class91.3FM’s Executive Breakfast Show on Wednesday, 21 June: “If I want to engage in a discussion on the Rawlings factor, then I’m looking at it from how it enhances the NDC’s image in winning elections. … And going on that tangent, I must say that the image of Chairman Rawlings is gradually waning in terms of his ability to call people to vote for the party because the party is growing bigger and bigger.”

Dr Opoku Mensah said the influence of Mr Rawlings in the NDC has been dwindling since 2001 because “there are a lot of other people who are coming into the party, courting young people to have a following…”

He said if President John Mills had been alive, he would have had a following within the party just as former President John Mahama currently commands a huge following among the young people in the party, developments which Dr Opoku Mensah believes have conspired to erode Mr Rawlings’ constituency within the NDC.

“… Now we have two former presidents in the party, of course one being the founder and that is the one we are talking about, but it’s coming to a point whereby if you slash the party’s following into percentages, there are other people who have grown considerably and competing with the founder in terms of following within the party,” Dr Opoku Mensah noted.

“It is clear that younger people in the party are not really following former President Rawlings but they are following [former] President Mahama and that is the future of the party.”

In his estimation, those within the NDC who still support Mr Rawlings are his contemporaries as well as those he nurtured politically such as the cadre arm of the party. “In a sense, if you look at those who still cherish June 4 and will follow former President Rawlings in espousing June 4 and articulating a new future of the party, you realise they are mostly the cadres and former PNDC functionaries who are all old or within a certain age bracket – 50 and upwards.”

He, however, noted that the party can only be sustained with the followership of the youth. “Any party that wants to be sustainable in elections needs a greater population of young people following the leadership of the party and I must emphasise that that position of former President Rawlings within the party in terms of votes is waning,” added the lecturer.

“If I want to quantify the Rawlings factor within the party in terms of numbers. I must say that in the eyes of Ghanaians, former President Rawlings is a huge figure, he founded the party but in terms of numbers, I’m afraid his support base within the party is waning.”