Ghana: NDC in a Blind Alley

Ebo Quansah

27 June 2011

Accra — Whoever emerges from the Sunyani congress as leader of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Friday July 8th to Sunday July 10th, will carry a heavy baggage into the 2012 presidential election.

From the way the two camps have torn into each other, both President John Evans Atta Mills and Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings will leave the Brong Ahafo Regional capital with scars and bruises that could prove a soft target for their main challengers in the 2012 presidential election.

It is a matter of ‘heads you lose, tails you lose’ for party members who would be left with the onerous duty of picking up the pieces and re-packaging the winner for the main presidential challenge. This is one primary that has gone way over the top.

As followers of Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings complain of intimidations and bullying tactics from the followers of the sitting President, the challenger and her followers have gone into overdrive in their endeavour to discredit Prof. Atta Mills and his administration, in their avowed aim of making it unrewarding for the electoral college of the party to chose him as flagbearer and leader of the NDC into the next elections.

In one hefty blow to the belly of the President, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings told Africa Watch, the United States of America-based Pan African magazine, edited by Ghanaian Steve Maloney, that President Atta Mills was supervising over massive corruption.

Apart from corruption in all spheres of national endeavour, the former First lady insists that the President had not been able to deliver on the many promises he made to the electorate on the campaign trail leading to the 2008 presidential and legislative elections.

“The people have not seen any improvement in their lives, and there is massive corruption all over the place,” she screamed. “Our party members are bitterly complaining about the direction the party and the country are taking, and no one listens to them. The entire party structure has collapsed from the constituency to the national level,” she told the magazine.

“If some things in the country are going wrong, we do no one a favour by burying our heads in the sand and pretending otherwise. The country will pay dearly if we don’t collectively let our leaders know the true position of things. We have come a long way, and we should do our best not to allow the situation to deteriorate to the bad old days. This explains why he (Rawlings) voices his concerns,” Nana Konadu explained.

A Nana Konadu presidency, in her own words, “will be a presidency that trusts Ghanaians enough to carry them along in all developmental efforts. My presidency will strive to ensure that no child’s future is jeopardised by the circumstances of their birth. Mine will be a presidency that promotes and ensures social justice.”

These may be re-assuring words to some party faithful. There are many within and without the party who would point to the ‘identification haircut’ meted out to one young man on the orders of the then First Lady of Ghana, for falling in love and subsequently ditching the daughter of the First Family.

That aside, there are quite a number of niggling issues, including the car keys on a dining table at a certain location at Ridge, a plush Accra suburb, in the events leading to the abduction and murder of the three judges and an army officer in June 1982.

The mind games in the presidential primary have several twists and turns. It started with the Atta Mortuary Man episode, leading to the seizure by the state security apparatus of 13,000 compact discs of a movie with the same title.

When former President Jerry John Rawlings told the story of Atta Mortuary Man, who would not listen to advice and got himself hooked on alcohol, he ended by saying that the mortuary attendant was running, following a soldier, who himself, thought he had seen a ghost in the Atta Mortuary Man epistle.

Political observers believe the mortuary man running in the direction of the soldier who thought he had seen a ghost, is an interesting reference to things done in the Atta Mills administration without proper conviction.

The next analogy from the repertoire of the former junta head, harping on the legendary ‘Konongo Kaya’, portrayed a man overburdened by his assignment and yet, rejecting help from those with the skill and know-how.

We need no ghost to point out that the Atta Mills administration is overwhelmed with problems it can not surmount, and is still refusing overtures from top NDC gurus like Dr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah and others.

On June 4, this year, ex-President Rawlings clearly told of his personal dilemma as a result of the mistake he made in choosing Prof. Atta Mills to lead the NDC in the Swedru declaration.

The concept of the mistaken chicken owned by the landlord, used in preparing the carpenter’s soup, for which the landlord keeps asking for drinks in compensation, is a crafty tale telling of the former President’s own mistake, which has cost him and the party dearly.

Against the tale of disappointment in the President comes the assertion from the man himself. President Atta Mills gave himself an 80 percent pass mark in the first 100 days of his administration, when there was no clear cut path that his government was following.

The last time he met his Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives at Koforidua, he tabled a vote of confidence in them and declared them as competent executives who had done marvelously well, sending a powerful message to the Rawlingses that he was well organised for the Sunyani congress.

His main backer, Get Atta Mills Endorsed (GAME), with Barbara Serwaa Asamoah as spokesperson, has come under serious criticism from the Konadu camp for intimidations and other tactics, with the tacit approval of party executives.

On the day Mrs. Rawlings picked her nomination forms, GAME allegedly organised a mob action to jostle and push members of the Friends of Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings (FONKAR) around. There were allegations that some of Konadu’s supporters were physically assaulted.

But, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, General Secretary of the NDC, insists that supporters of the First Lady have not been able to provide any proof of intimidation by their bitterest opponents.

When the party ruled that the voting procedure would be on a regional basis, the Konadu faction cried foul, insisting, with some justification, that the voting procedure would make some people vulnerable and compromise their votes. But the party bosses deny any favouritism, a charge which the NDC executive is still struggling to parry.

NDC regional chairmen and their executives went to the Castle to pledge their support for President Mills, in the full glare of television cameras. But, when Mr. Rawlings expressed his support for the wife, a fiat was issued from the party office at Kokomlemle, banning party executives from taking sides.

The two sides are trooping to Sunyani with grievances. While openly, the Atta Mills camp appear to welcome the challenge from the former First Lady, there is the growing concern that the scenario that has been created in the party, to make it possible for a sitting President to be challenged from his own party for the first time since constitutional rule returned to the body politic, after the promulgation of the 1992 Constitution, was a slap in the face of the Mills leadership.

The Konadu camp, on the other hand, is embittered by what they consider open support from party big shots in the direction of President Atta Mills, while making it difficult for party members to declare their support for the former first lady.

From the way each camp has torn into each other, the Sunyani congress is likely to churn out a lame duck leader for the party. It is a matter of heads you lose, tail you lose, for the NDC.

From Olonkar, through Fonkar and Nakonet, Game and Sadam, the stage is set for a fierce contest with wide-ranging repercussions on the NDC as a party, and the direction of Ghana politics in general.

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