When the Umbrella begins to tumble (II)

Ebo Quansah in Accra

The Akans, the largest ethnic group in the country, have a very interesting mantra. “If your mother is dead and you turn round to tell the people that she is asleep, that is your own problem.” At the moment, top officials of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) are competing among themselves to denounce former President Jerry John Rawlings as being irrelevant to the fortunes of the party any more.
Presidential aide Nii lante Vanderpuiye, the man who has been fingered for most of the violence that characterised the registration exercise in the Odododiodoo Constituency, has even gone further. He says Rawlings, generally accepted as the founder of the party, is the leading traitor in the NDC.
Read his lips: “If there is any traitor, it is Rawlings who is a traitor, and not some of us.” The former sports commentator, now described as Operations Director at the Castle, was responding to the former President’s outburst that the party now has two enemies – the traditional rivals and the traitor.
Justifying his description of the founder as a traitor, Mr. Vanderpuiye charged: “Why is it that all the people who have worked with Rawlings are no more with him? Is it that he is the only good person and all the others are bad?”
On the part of Alhaji Iddrisu Bature, one of the stoutest defenders of the NDC on the airwaves, the former President should be concerned with addressing personal family issues and not dabble in matters concerning the party he is credited to have established.
Describing Mr. Rawlings as a confused and vindictive person, Bature fumed: “He is now advocating the rejection of the party he has founded and a person he has imposed on the NDC party. If this is not a confused mind, then I don’t know,” he is reported to have told a radio programme in Accra.
One interesting thing about what is happening is that this is the same Rawlings who did no wrong even when he unleashed terror on the populace. When three judges and an army officer were abducted and slaughtered by agents of the military junta, who were living in the boys’ quarters of the Rawlingses’ Ridge residence, many of those now attacking him saw him as a saviour.
Now, people who claim to believe in the NDC as a democratic entity are queuing in their desperation to condemn their own founder. The other day, Mr. Johnson Asiedu Nketia, who as Director of the Bui Dam Project, has struck a lucrative business enterprise with the company he is directing from the board room, coined a new word which obviously describes the founder of his party.
The ‘barking dog’, he was quoted as saying, has been silenced. Obviously, this is one description that irks the former junta head.
By the way, does anybody remember the circumstances leading to the abduction and murder of Justice Poku Sarkodie, Kwadwo Adjei Agyepong and Cecelia Koranteng-Addo, as well as Major Sam Acquah? In the early days of the so-called revolution, when many Ghanaians refused to accept the legitimacy of the junta, it was one callous act planned and carefully executed to put fear in the general populace, and bought time for the junta.
Even the Special Investigations Board that investigated the abduction and murder of the judges,  fell short of linking the Head of State to the crime, even though evidence was clear that two of the murderers were living at the residence of the junta head, and that the accused persons made it abundantly clear at the trial that they understood their assignment to mean that they were working to safeguard the interest of the junta.
Remember how the Head of State broke the news? Jerry John Rawlings appeared on then black and white Ghana Television, and announced that enemies of the revolution had abducted the three judges and an army officer. The regime was doing its best to find the perpetrators and bring them to book, he said,
When the four bodies were found at the Bundase Military Firing Range, a terse government statement said the bodies had been found in the Accra plains. How four bodies came to occupy the Accra Plains, which stretches from Saltpond in the Central Region to Aflao, the border town in the Volta Region, told everything about the intentions of the most brutal regime ever to take charge of this country.
In spite of the obvious link the junta head had with this heinous crime, supporters of the brutal Provisional National defence council (PNDC) regime, many of whom are now crying over spilt milk in the NDC, rather turned their anger on Mr. Justice Azu Crabbe and members of the Special Investigations Board, for linking the military junta to one of the most sordid acts in the contemporary history of Ghana.
Those crying wolf may not admit it, but the formation of the NDC as a political party was the perpetration of a giant fraud on the people of this country, and the constitutional experiment that unfolded later. But the Provisional National Defence Council operatives and the military junta’s supporters, now in the NDC, stoutly defended the leader and his officials who pulled a fast one on everybody.
Here was a military junta running the affairs of state without the mandate of anybody. After 11 and a half years of oppression, the people of this country were crying for the system to be democratised.  The authorities simply decided to turn the whole governance system into a political party. With the resources of state, including public finances, available to them, those propping up the regime decided to rid the PNDC of the P. What remained is what now answers the name of NDC. Period!
Suddenly, state officials at headquarters, regional capitals and the districts became NDC activists oiled by state resources. As was explained at the 10th Anniversary of the founding of the 31st December Movement, under the guise of a non-governmental organisation (NGO), the Movement, with its projects like day nurseries and various activities funded by the state, simply constituted itself into the women’s wing of the NDC.
Meanwhile, those establishing other parties had to fall on their private resources. This gigantic fraud was applauded by those who are now complaining about the machinations of the founder of the party. Murder and assassinations employed by the regime to silence refuseniks were all music in the ears of followers of the NDC, who are incidentally, now complaining.
When Ghanaians poured onto the streets of Accra in their thousands on May 11, 1995 to protest against the high cost of living and the introduction of the Value Added Tax without proper consultation, armed members of the Association for the Defence of the Revolution, and military officers stationed at the Castle, were let loose on them.
Four people, including Ahunu Hongar, a 14 year old pupil of the Liberty Avenue Junior Secondary School, were shot dead, while many others were seriously injured. It was obvious that Jerry John Rawlings was no democrat. But, he was goaded on by members of the NDC to terrorise society to ensure that the NDC could become a viable political party.
In all honesty, what is happening is akin to the behaviour of a playground bully, who has decided to catch his ball and thus bring the game to an end, because the decision of the referee has not been in his favour.
The NDC, as a political concept, was born in fraud, using the intimidating powers of the gun and state resources to nurture. In all honesty, Jerry John Rawlings has never been a democrat.
All those who aided the former President to become the constitutional President of this republic through the back door, have been jettisoned along the way. My thesis here is that the NDC leadership, who are crying wolf today, knew of the deficiencies of Jerry Rawlings as a democrat. But, to safeguard their own selfish interests, they goaded him on to use unconventional means to reach his goal.
When I hear NDC activists lecture on the democratic credentials of their party and its founder, I raise my hands to the high heavens, and wonder what the people of Ghana have done wrong to deserve the kind of leadership which has perfected the art of lying through their teeth.

The NDC, as a political concept, was born in fraud, using the intimidating powers of the gun and state resources to nurture. In all honesty, Jerry John Rawlings has never been a democrat. 

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