Rawlings May Be Right!

There have been many things that former President Rawlings has done and continues to do which I fiercely detest. In fact, I hated it when he pushed his wife, Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, to contest sitting President Mills for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) 2012 flagbearership. I have also not been too happy with Rawlings lambasting President Mills at every turn of event, saying that he never listens to him. And I will never forgive Rawlings if he fails to campaign for NDC�s success in the upcoming elections. But I cannot take it away from Rawlings certain things that he has been saying, which gradually is coming home to roost at the entrance of the NDC big umbrella. When the NDC won the 2008 elections, I remember vividly Rawlings warning to the NDC bigwigs and the party faithful in general that they should be very careful about people who will try to infiltrate the party to seek certain favours. Rawlings is noted for saying over and over again since then that if the NDC does not keep its eyes open such infiltrators who are just wolves in sheep�s clothing will swarm the corridors of power, pretend that they are sympathizers of the NDC and seek mouth watering favours at the expense of the true NDC members and especially foot-soldiers who campaigned fiercely and relentlessly to ensure the party�s success in 2008. I also remember that the NDC foot-soldiers have also been echoing these sentiments over and over again but some bigwigs have resorted to branding them as �cry babies�. For the past three years that the NDC has been in power, this wise counsel from Rawlings has not been heeded to. In fact, some NDC party bigwigs have thrown this caveat from Rawlings to the gutters. And what we are seeing and been seeing is the horde of National Patriotic Party (NPP) businessmen who have suddenly changed party colours, trooping to the NDC corridors of power to seek big contracts and goodwill. Some of these NPP businessmen, who had nothing to do with the NDC when it was struggling in the opposition wilderness for eight solid years, are today walking at the NDC access strip with the entire swagger and behaving as if without them the NDC will not exist. Breaking News!!! The NDC has been struggling for the past one month trying to find its lost voice. Their backs have been pinned to the wall for no fault of theirs but the struggle which started way back in December 2011 continues. Why will they not struggle since many in the party does not care a hoot about what happens to the party�s fortunes in the upcoming 2012 election? And I dare predict that there will be many more struggles ahead or to put it bluntly many rivers to cross unless the party bigwigs begin to heed to wise advice. And did I say the NDC has been struggling for the past one month? Of course, they have been struggling big time and this is making Rawlings look too good to be ignored. Do you remember Rawlings� wise counsel that the NDC should purge itself of infiltrators? If the NDC had listened and listened very well, the party will not today be reeling under severe pressure (Ras Kimono). There is this Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome whose company Vamed/Waterville Engineering won a CAN 2008 contract, but President Kufour down the lane found something culpable to terminate it. Mr. Woyome took the case to court for wrongful termination of contract and won the case. Therefore, in 2010 a High Court ordered the State to pay an amount of GH�42 million in judgment debt to Mr. Woyomefor the illegal termination of his contract by former President Kufour. I will not go to the density of the Woyome�s case today. I will comment on it in another article. Mr. Woyome has been referred variously by NPP stalwarts as an NDC kingpin or bankroller. Others have labeled Woyome as a die-hard NDC, but snippets of information that keeps filtering into the chicken cook of the NDC and to a larger extent the Ghanaian public domain is that Mr. Woyome may after all not be an NDC member. Mr. Woyome is known by many, many people as an NPP man who played various roles for the NPP during Kufour�s eight years regime. This statement of fact has even been echoed by a no less person than the General Secretary of the NPP, Mr. Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie (Sir John). But Woyome is the man who today is being paraded as a so-called NDC bankroller. If the NDC bigwigs who courted Woyome because of his so-called money have done some due diligence or have at least grudgingly and under the cover of darkness paid attention to Rawlings� admonishment, the NDC party will not start the 2012 election year still reeling under severe untold pressures from all fronts. There is this issue which I also want to bring to the notice of the NDC bigwigs and the party faithful. There is this businessman who is also parading the air corridors of the NDC today with all the pomposity one can think of. He is having a big sway on the bigwigs of the NDC. I have no doubt that he is an astute businessman who has employed many Ghanaians who otherwise may have been on the streets looking for jobs. But is that the only measuring rod or reason why he alone is being loaded with contracts upon contracts at the expense of other qualified NDC people? If that is the only reason then I will say that, if physical dimensions are the only deciding factors, the elephant would have been the king of the jungle. There is one more thing I would want to drum home to the NDC. This involves the printing industry. There are many Ghanaian printers who were branded as NDC men and therefore denied jobs upon jobs that they bid for during the Kufour regime. Therefore, with the coming into power of the NDC, many of these printers thought that their woes may be over. But they were wrong. Printers, who collaborated with Kufour in denying so-called NDC printers jobs during his tenure in office, are today the same printers in bed with the NDC. Beware of the infiltrators, Rawlings warned! Sometimes NDC foot-soldiers and Rawlings make a lot of noise. In fact, they at times become so noisy that NDC people fail to digest some of the minutest things they say to understand what they are actually talking about. I myself, I am guilty as I find the foot-soldiers and Rawlings very noisy and annoying sometimes. But recent events should give the NDC food for thought. It should give the NDC a wake-up call to guard against infiltrators. The NDC bigwigs must know one thing. There will always be a bigger difference between the loyalties of the infiltrators towards the NDC party as against the foot-soldiers towards the NDC party. I bet you, while the loyalty of the NDC infiltrators will largely tilt towards the bigwigs in the party that of the NDC foot-soldiers, to a greater extent, will lie with the NDC party. That is the bottom line. I must painfully say that former President Rawlings may be right after all, when he warned about infiltrators. Every governing party looks out for its party faithful. It�s the norm in both so-called First and Third worlds. The NPP portrayed it all for us to see. It was very glaring. But this seems to be missing in the NDC. What went wrong? If today the chips are down or if the NDC finds itself in opposition in the upcoming elections, they will know where the loyalties of the infiltrators are. It will never be with the NDC, I predict. This is why I must painfully conclude that, Rawlings May be Right After All. NB: This is NOT the original/full article. The Editorial Team of PEACEFMONLINE has exercised its discretion by editing portions of this article.