Ex-President Jerry John Rawlings recent outburst against President John Evans Atta Mills has attracted a robust and biting response from Kwesi Pratt Jnr, who rubbished his former pal as a man with Messianic illusions, virtually telling him to go to hell.
Pratt even accused the former military dictator of masterminding the disappearance of over 250 Ghanaians under strange circumstances and extra judicial killings.
This latest reaction from Kwesi Pratt, Managing Editor of the Insight newspaper, the man who stood side by side with Mr. Rawlings during the immediate past political season, indicates how far their political relationship has frozen a little over a year since the National Democratic Congress (NDC) took over the reins of power.
The devotion of Radio Golds programme, Alhaji and Alhaji, to Mr. Rawlings outburst was testimony of how infamous the ex-presidents remarks about the sitting president have been received by his apologists, including Pratt.
Cell phones buzzed as individual political observers called each other to ask that they listen to the programme as Mr. Pratt made telltale revelations about how, for instance, Mr. Rawlings sought to have Prof Mills replaced at the last minute and asked for Ato Ahwois support to buttress the point that after all, the ex-president was not in favour of the incumbent head of state assuming power as he seeks to have people believe.
The recent who born dog outbursts appear to have broken the camels back, prompting the one-time Rawlings apologist to come out with things he had kept in his mind for a long time.
Pratt dared Ato Ahwoi to prove his honour by endorsing the revelation he made about Mr. Rawlings futile effort at replacing Prof Mills with him.
He did not take kindly to Mr. Rawlings assertion that he had sat on the presidential throne for 18 years, querying him for reducing the presidency to a chieftaincy.
He kicked against the so-called Midas Touch of Mr. Rawlings towards the NDCs electoral victories, asking whether the man is considering himself as another Jesus Christ.
Speaking like a man in a mental pain for a long time and who had finally been compelled to let out the bottled up heat, he condemned Mr. Rawlings expression that President Mills had surrounded himself with greedy bastards, remarks which he made in an earlier outburst.
For Mr. Pratt, the foregone remarks were nothing but mendacity, especially since he, Rawlings, worked with the same persons he now turns round to describe as greedy bastards. The Managing Editor disagreed with what is generally held as the Rawlings factor in the NDCs electoral victory.
The NDC, he noted, won the last election not because of Mr. Rawlings and that this is a man who is also not on good terms with the incumbent Vice President, John Dramani Mahama.
When Rawlings leaves the NDC, only a few people would follow him, he asserted, to prove a point that the departure of the ex-president would not impact negatively on the survivability of the ruling political grouping as many want to believe.
Having stopped raising the issue of the hordes of persons who went missing during the tenure of Mr. Rawlings, Mr. Pratt appeared to have reignited the subject when he referred to his former pal as a murderer who is responsible for the disappearance of over 250 Ghanaians.
Mr. Pratt took umbrage at the position of some Ghanaians that Mr. Rawlings, as a citizen of this country and under a democratic dispensation, is only expressing his rights to free expression.
Mr. Rawlings outbursts, for him, do not qualify to be treated as such, adding that the ex-president is only running down Prof Mills by those irresponsible outbursts.
For the umpteenth time, Mr. Rawlings has expressed misgivings about the incumbent presidency, describing President Mills not only as slow, but lacking direction.Many Ghanaians were taken aback when the ex-president made the first post-election attack on the man he vigorously assisted to become president.
When subsequent ones followed, Ghanaians no doubt discovered that they are in for a long haul, especially when during the latest outburst, the former Air Force pilot who swept onto the political terrain through a military insurrection, served notice that I will not stop today. I will continue to speak out until his men wake up.
Mr. Rawlings latest outburst, arguably the most vitriolic, was embedded with the Ghanaian street parlance who born dog? to buttress how under his tenure, acts of indiscipline were not tolerated.
In the outburst before that, he had referred to President Mills surrounding himself with greedy bastards, a description which resonated during Mr. Pratts intervention on Saturday.
The outbursts are now by and large categorized according to themes. Whereas the penultimate one was labeled Greedy Bastards, the last one goes by Who Born Dog?
Many doubted President Mills position when he told the media at the Castle recently that Rawlings criticisms do not perturb him at all, saying the former president is only exercising his right to free speech.
Source: D Guide/ghana
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