Please forgive us, Anita pleads with Rawlings

She went down on her knees and pleaded with former President Jerry John Rawlings, saying: “Please forgive us; let us come together and build our party.”

Almost in tears at the Madina Social Welfare School Park yesterday where she joined scores of cadres of the June 4 Revolution and other activists of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to mark the 39th anniversary of the June 4 Uprising, a former National Women’s Organiser of the NDC, Ms Anita Desosoo, expressed remorse for the manner the party had treated its founder.

‘Please forgive’

Taking her turn to address the event, which was on the theme: “Reorganising towards the core values”, Ms Desosoo acknowledged the fact that the NDC was made up of human beings who, naturally, could err in their comments and asked for forgiveness from the former President and asked him to return to the fold to help in rebuilding the party.

“Let us respect our father J.J. Rawlings. Please, you are my father and we beg you to forgive us, so that we come together and build our party,” she said to the former President as she knelt down before him on the podium, amid cheers from the gathering.

Ms Desosoo also said the former President, being human, was fallible and, therefore, might have stepped on a few toes in the NDC and urged him to forgive persons in the party who had offended him with their utterances in one way or the another.

Monetary influence

Touching on other concerns in the party, the former women’s organiser decried the use of money to influence the outcome of the ongoing electoral process within the party and called for an immediate stop to the practice.

She expressed concern about divisions in the cadre front of the party and called for unity to ensure that the cadres were given a place of recognition in the next government that the NDC would form.

In an apparent reaction to the apology by Ms Desosoo, former President Rawlings, in his address, said: “No one must apologise for the truth; what people must apologise for is lying and stealing from the people.”

“I know many of you here came prepared, waiting for me with your ears properly cleaned, expecting me to ‘boom’, as advertised, but I will reserve the boom for another day,” he said, as the crowd cheered him on for more ‘booms’.

Fight corruption

An aspiring Deputy National Youth Organiser of the NDC, Mr Lawrence Lamptey, asked members of the NDC to channel their energies to the fight against corruption, adding that “corrupt persons should not be allowed to take charge of the NDC”.

“As youth born out of the revolution, we must be a shining light and an example to the youth of the country by carrying the core values in our hearts,” he submitted.
Mr Lamptey underscored the need for the NDC to imbibe the principles of the revolution in the structures of the party.