Jerry John Rawlings
With less than two days to the presidential and parliamentary elections, the founder of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), former President Jerry John Rawlings, appears to have nailed the coffin of some of his party people when he said yesterday that they wanted to stay in office to cover up their corruption.
?Some people are bent on using violence to perpetuate their stay because of their corruption.?
The former president was speaking to an Accra-based radio station Citi FM, after meeting former Nigerian strongman President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is in the country as the leader of the ECOWAS Election Observer Mission monitoring Friday?s general elections.
He complained about the conduct of an NDC candidate, Kobbie Woyome, brother of Alfred Agbesi Woyome, in the Tongu areas in the Volta Region. ?Clearly, it is because he does not want to be unseated by the integrity of the independent candidate,? that was why he was behaving that way.
?There is this chap in one of the Tongu areas?what is he called?this Woyome chap?the NDC candidate?has gone to report to a collection of queenmothers as well as to the assemblies, accusing the independent as well as the NPP candidate of plotting to use machetes on the election day that this plot was hatched in Ashaiman and he has a tape recording?oh come on. You don?t go and fabricate things like that!
?I hope the police are taking the appropriate steps to investigate.
?The point is that when a chap so audaciously with such a corrupt background like Woyome would look at the queenmothers, respectable people like that, the assembly people and make such a serious stupid allegation against a gentleman like Mr. Klutse, I don?t know who the NPP candidate is, in a largely NDC support area, I mean that is going a little too far,? Mr Rawlings stated.
Mr. Rawlings said, ?John (President Mahama) needs people of integrity and the people of integrity were not given the chance in the constituency elections and that is what is forcing them to join other parties or come as independent candidates.
?I think these are some of the things that happened, you know, talking for the NDC lot, John (Mahama) enjoys a good support on the ground as far as the NDC is concerned but I know some of his own people are sabotaging him.
?The chap, for instance, has gone to post his picture on top of John?s picture. I have taken pictures and I can show it to you. I heard about it I didn?t believe it until somebody showed it to me. That is not the only place, in some of the rural areas in the northern parts a similar thing is happening.?
The former Ghanaian president, who never shies away from expressing his strong views, when asked if he would vote on Friday, laughed and said, ?Why won?t I??
Asked again whom he was going to vote for, he said, ?Actually I wouldn?t have minded telling you who I was going to vote for in terms of the parliamentary candidates, but not the presidential.?
?We leave it at that,? he stressed, and when probed further, he said, ?of course!? but did not mention which presidential candidate he was going to vote for, contrary to the perception that the NDC founder had endorsed John Mahama.
Mr Rawlings openly declared his support for the party?s candidate, Prof Atta Mills in 2008 elections.
Commenting on public fears that disputes in the electoral process could plunge the country into chaos, Rawlings said, ?I wouldn?t be that worried but I am saying that the underlining factors are such that we cannot take things for granted.
?When the political atmosphere is devoid of a moral stuff or a moral high ground by any one of the parties, then it can be quite provocative.?
By William Yaw Owusu
