Rawlings chides NDC, NPP over Amidu's appointment

Former President Jerry John Rawlings has remarked that the agitation by politicians from both the governing and the opposition parties over the appointment of Mr Martin Amidu as Special Prosecutor attests to the fact that politicians can collaborate to orchestrate acts of corruption.

“Today, we have appointed a hard iron heart like Martin Amidu to be in charge of fighting corruption and some people in the National Democratic Congress (NDC) are angry. Their counterparts in the New Patriotic Party (NPP) are equally angry. What should that tell you?” he asked.

The former President made the remark at a Town Hall meeting of cadres and activists of the NDC in Accra on Saturday.

The Town Hall meeting of cadres and activists of the NDC was on the theme: “Grassroots mobilisation and organisation of the National Democratic Congress for Victory 2020”.

Former President Rawlings said the NDC, while in government, failed to make good use of the man who stood for the values and principles of the party, adding:
“Amidu should have been used by us. But, no! We rejected him when he is an embodiment of the principles we stand for.”

Focus beyond 2020

He suggested that the focus of the NDC should not only be on being victorious in 2020 but rather on how to govern the country well.

He advised against the narrowing of the electoral college of the party because such an action lacked moral legitimacy and was tantamount to giving people their freedom and taking it back from them.

Former President Rawlings indicated that he had never held any foreign account or offshore asset anywhere.

He explained that the only time he had a foreign account was when a former United Nations (UN) Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, invited him to work on an anti-Aids campaign project that required him to open a foreign account through which he would be paid allowances, adding: “But that account is closed.”

A Defence Minister in the erstwhile NDC administration, Dr Benjamin Kunbour, said the congress of the party was responsible for the mishaps that had affected its internal democracy and national organisation.

He debunked the assertion that the party had been divided into factions.

“Instead of them saying that there are tendencies under the congress, they coined the term ‘factions’. Factions are different from tendencies in political parties. I don’t belong to a faction in the NDC; I belong to a tendency in the NDC that captures the values of what we have fought for over these years,” he added.

Mocking founder

A member of the NDC, Mr Antwi Boasiako-Sekyere, cautioned members of the party against mocking its founder, explaining that the former President still wielded influence in the NDC.

He further asked members who did not want to be associated with the ideals of the December 31,1981 Revolution that gave birth to the NDC to consider leaving the party.

“Any person who is ashamed of the NDC’s revolutionary antecedent and does not believe in its principles and values should spare us the agony of becoming its leader at any level, rather than use it as a cash cow,” he said.