Rawlings Not NDC Founder

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Parent Category: Our Country

Category: Politics

Created on Wednesday, 12 October 2011 00:00

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Rawlings Not NDC Founder

Former President Jerry John Rawlings’s title as the founder of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) has been vehemently questioned by his one-time close ally, Dr Obed Yao Asamoah, infuriating the die-hard supporters of the former head of state.

Dr Asamoah, life-patron of the defunct Democratic Freedom Party (DFP), who served under former president Rawlings as Foreign Minister as well as Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, made the controversial remark barely a few days after his re-admission into the NDC, stoking fire in the ruling party.

Kofi Adams, spokesman for the ex-president, warned Dr Asamoah to be mindful of his utterances, saying that his quest to rejoin the party could be aborted mid-stream, since the party had not formally re-admitted him.

Some DFP members had kicked against the merger with the NDC, and served notice that they would soon hold a press conference to make their position known to the public.

The DFP life-patron indicated that it was the adherents of the ex-Ghanaian leader who called him NDC founder, and that Mr Rawlings played little or no role in the formation of the NDC.

Dr. Asamoah and his ilk broke away from the NDC and formed DFP in 2006 after serious disagreements with former president Rawlings on the direction of the party after a rancorous congress in Koforidua.

According to him, former President Rawlings and his loyalists had misinterpreted a provision in the NDC constitution, which said the ruling party was founded on the ideals of the former president, to mean he was the founder.

A former National Chairman of NDC, Dr. Asamoah further indicated that the party had not got a founder, but founders who had been representatives of all the districts in Ghana at the time the party was founded.

Surprisingly, Dr. Asamoah banged his telephone on Daily Guide yesterday when the paper contacted him to give the list of the NDC founders, retorting, “My friend, I have spoken enough on this issue and I don’t want to speak to anybody on it again!”
The DFP life-patron however told Joy FM he had the list of all the founders.

“I have the list of founders, because I was instrumental in the formation of the party and the registration of the party with the Electoral Commission and …it would interest you to note that that list doesn’t contain President Rawlings’s (name),” he said.He had earlier recounted that at the time the NDC was founded, the former head of state was still in the military and the political parties’ law barred him from playing any role in the formation of a political party.

However, the claims by the DFP leader had outraged loyalists of former President Rawlings who strongly believed Dr Asamoah’s remarks were part of a well-calculated plot by some gurus within NDC to humiliate and eventually make the ‘founder’ irrelevant in the party.

Just last Saturday at a home-coming ceremony of DFP members who were rejoining the NDC at the Arts Center in Accra, General Secretary of NDC, Johnson Asiedu-Nketiah had said that issues and personalities that chased away Dr. Asamoah and his group in the DFP from the ruling party had themselves been eliminated.

“Now the barking dog whose actions forced you out of the NDC no longer exists, so I would have been surprised if you had continued to stay outside…” Mr. Asiedu Nketia stated, apparently referring to a personality political analysts suspected was former President Rawlings, who has had problems with some of the members of DFP.

But Ernest Owusu-Bempah, a member of the Friends of Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings (FONKAR), who was outraged by Asiedu Nketia’s comments, opined that the former President held NDC’s title deeds and he would not allow “home dogs to come home with dirt”.

Going ballistic in a text message, which Daily Guide intercepted, Mr. Owusu-Bempah stated, “Home dogs who have decided to go wayward must be told to stop bringing home dirty, filthy rabies home.”

Jerry Rawlings (JJ), he asserted, held the “title deeds to the formation of the party (NDC)”.

Touching on the merger between the DFP and the NDC, Dr Asamoah said the lack of internal democracy and the use of violence and intimidation against members with opposing views in the NDC were things that precipitated the breaking away of the DFP.

He said now that those tendencies no longer existed, remaining outside the NDC would suggest there were reasons other than those stated for which the DFP was formed.

He rejected suggestions that the merger was buoyed by promises of appointments to leading members of the DFP, insisting that he had never lobbied for an appointment.

Source: Awudu Mahama