Konadu Strike at the heart of NDC… as guru says exit is good riddance
Nana Kunadu Agyeman RAwlings
Ebo Quansah Reporting
To be or not to be? That is no more the question. After months of speculation, evidence is emerging that the December 7 ballot paper will have an effigy of a female presidential candidate. Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings, wife of the founder of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is on the verge of establishing a new political party to canvass for votes mainly from believers in umbrella politics.
Yesterday, Dr. Josiah Aryee, former General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress, said on an Accra radio station that an application had been made to the Electoral Commission to register the National Democratic Party as a political entity to contest the December 7, presidential and legislative elections.
Dr. Aryee said the leadership of the new party was still compiling the list of founding members. He intimated though that former President Jerry John Rawlings and Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings had already given their blessings to the formation of the new party
According to the former NDC scribe, the emblem of the new party was a rising dove with the Gye Nyame (except God) symbol in the background.
Asked whether the party was not too late for the 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections, he said the party was already well fixed on the ground.
Dr. Aryee, lecturer in law at the University of Ghana, told listeners that they were urged on by the fact that Ghana was now being led by men and women who lacked the drive to move this nation forward.
On Wednesday, Mr. Kofi Adams, spokesman for the Rawlingses, told Oman FM in Accra that he was aware that a new political party was on the offing. Though the party would not be founded by the former President of the Republic of Ghana, the new party would receive the backing of the former junta head, who ruled this nation for 19 years, eight of them as a constitutional Head of State.
On another network, Mr. Adams asked Ghanaians not to be surprised if a new party emerged soon, dedicated towards salvaging the NDC from the problems it had created for itself.
Asked on Oman FM yesterday, whether he was a member of the new party, Mr. Ernest Owusu Bempah, Operations Director of the Friends of Nana Agyeman Rawlings (FONKAR), told Fiifi Boafo, Morning show host on the network owned by Assin North Member of Parliament, Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, that members of FONKAR would lend support to a party dedicated to the return to the body politic of the principles of June Four and the 31st December coup d’etat.
With the formation of the party, political pundits are clear in their conception that the NDP would be led by Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings into the December polls.
Though the NDC leadership was quick to dismiss the threat posed by the new party in public, political pundits are of the view that with the NDC already bleeding from a very low acceptability rate from the general public as a result of the economic hardship facing the people of this nation, a mass exodus to join the new gravy train with the founder of the party leading the chorus would seriously damage the electoral fortunes of the party.
Mrs. Rawlings has not forgiven the leadership of the NDC for what she termed the skewed nature of the Sunyani congress, and the humiliation visited on her after the vote.
On Saturday, September 17, the former First Lady was prevented from addressing NDC faithful at the Cape Coast Town Hall by ‘machomen’ suspected to have been hired by the Central Regional Minister, Ama Benyiwa-Doe.
On January 3, 2012, Mrs. Rawlings told an Accra FM station that the leadership of the NDC, under President Mills, had failed to admit the problems and shortcomings that characterised the congress last year.
The former President has already dismissed the electoral fortunes of the NDC in the December elections. He has made it abundantly clear that President Mills had already driven the country into a ditch, and would not be the proper person to trust the fortunes of the country into again.
It would be an interesting scenario picturing the former President on the campaign trail for the new NDP, against the party he founded and the candidate he single-handedly lifted from political obscurity to become the Head of State of this Republic.
Whatever the leadership of the NDC would say in public, the formation of the NDP, led by Konadu Agyeman Rawlings, with active support of the former President, would hit hard at the centre of umbrella politics.
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I am very glad that former first lady has her own party for now, this should not be a threat to ndc because they opted for. If you surround yourself with people like Okujato, Asiedu Nketia , Anyidoho and the rest then you must as well expect a nose dive fall of your government and party as well. People in the military who monitored seriously for NDC during election 2008 because of the love for JJ were all pushed aside. Imagine Atta Mills having national security operatives drawn from Abossey Okai and even fos sellers from Kantamanto, ignoring people with security background. Everything about agya Atta is questionable. Konadu is going to have a massive support so NDC should start writing handing over notes for NPP or NDP.