Kwamena Ahwoi Writes About His Working Relationship With Rawlings
Local government expert, Professor Kwamena Ahwoi has written extensively about his working relationship with former President Jerry John Rawlings.
Born on born October 13, 1951, at South Suntreso in Kumasi, Professor Ahwoi served as Minister of Local Government and Rural Development from 1990 to 2001 in the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government, during former President Jerry John Rawlings' era.
He also briefly served as Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1997 and was an acting minister in that department during much of the 1990s.
In 2005, he resigned as director of research for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) political party.
The yet to be launched book titled, "Working with Rawlings" according to Professor Ahwoi is not a book about Jerry John Rawlings neither is it about Kwamena Ahwoi or the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) which led Ghana's governance from 1981 to January 6, 1993.
Rather, Professor Ahwoi talks extensively about his working relationship with Jerry John Rawlings, their ups and downs, and their joint commitment to building a "better Ghana".
He explains in the book that somewhere along the line, they drifted apart and also talks about the political history of Ghana between 1979 to 2010.
He expressed the hope that Ghana’s leaders of today and in the future will learn some lessons from his account in the book, leaving out the negatives and accentuating the positives.
Up until this time, Dr Obed Asamoah's book - The Political History of Ghana (1950-2013): The Experience of a Non-Conformist - had been the main reference point for that period.
Asked whether Professor Ahwoi saw it as an opportunity to filling some of the gaps in Dr Asamoah's book, he said "no, this is an independent work. Obed's book you know, because of the length, and the period it covered from about 1951 to about 2010 or thereabout, it is very difficult for many people to read."
"You really must be interested in reading before you are able to go through it, it is over 600 pages. This is the short, precise account of the Rawlings period between 1979, how I got involved and then the period where both of us exited government and the short period that we found ourselves in opposition, so it is a complementary story to Obed's but it does not fill in any gaps, that Obed might have left behind," Prof Ahwoi said in a radio interview on Accra based Citi FM, Monday morning, July 27, 2020. He spoke about the book in the radio interview with Citi FM.
Asked about whether he tried to offer a clarification in Dr Asamoah's book where he stated that when the Swedru declaration was made, he saw the Ahwoi brothers and Totobi Kwakye essentially so excited, Prof Ahwoi said he took sometime to clarify that "because it was untrue.@
"We were surprised by the declaration as he himself (Obed) might have been and he knew Rawlings as well as we did, so he could think that Rawlings could not do something like that without our involvement, i find it very surprising. If he was not involved how could we have been involved and the truth of the matter is that, we were not involved, we did not know and we were very surprised when the declaration was made."
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