Since 1979, when ex-President Jerry John Rawlings burst onto Ghana�s political scene, he and his wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings, have sung from the same page. But not anymore, it appears. The ascension of President John Dramani Mahama appears to have created a dilemma for the Rawlings household, where the husband is conciliatory toward Mahama but the wife cannot bring herself to forgive the No. 2 man behind the late President John Atta Mills, who drubbed her in the National Democratic Congress primaries in 2011.
It has been more than a year since the former Ghanaian president, Jerry John Rawlings, fired a �boom� against the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), the political party that he founded in 1992.
�Boom� is the term that Ghanaians coined for the vitriolic attacks that Rawlings leveled against the NDC and the government when the late President John Atta Mills was in charge.
But ever since Mills� sudden death in July 2012, Rawlings� rhetorical tone against the NDC has noticeably softened. Some political observers say that, given the circumstances of President Mills� death, common decency demanded that Rawlings scale back his political critiques.
But others attribute Rawlings� verbal retreat to the ascension of President John Mahama, who extended a hand of reconciliation to Rawlings.
Mahama, who was mills� vice president, assumed the presidency in accordance with Ghana�s constitution on the day Mills died. He then became the NDC�s 2012 standard-bearer for the December 2012 elections, which he won over New Patriotic Party (NPP) challenger Nana Akufo-Addo. Some observers say Rawlings finds Mahama more to his liking because he is easier to deal with than the quiet but steely Mills.
But whether it was forced on him or he accepted it willingly, Rawlings is observing the ceasefire � and enjoying something of a return to his status as revered party elder.
Recently, the Mahama government, some say, supported and encouraged the University of Development Studies (UDS) to confer an honorary doctorate degree on Rawlings and commission a statue of him at the school for donating $50,000 in prize money he received for winning the World Food Prize Foundation Award in 1993 as seed money for the establishment of the UDS.
The UDS had earlier attempted to honor Rawlings, but he government of then President John Kufuor of the rival NPP allegedly pressured the college authorities to abort the plan.
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