A Former Special Aide to ex-President Rawlings, Victor Smith has taken a swipe at his former boss over his failure to openly criticise President Nana Akufo-Addo and his NPP government like he did to other governments.
According to Ambassador Victor Smith, President Akufo-Addo has not yet suffered ex-President Rawlings’ constant criticisms and verbal attacks not because his administration is performing well but because Rawlings is “probably in bed” with the NPP.
The former President Jerry John Rawlings has described his successors; John Agyekum Kufuor, the late President John Atta Mills and John Mahama as corrupt due to their inability to tackle corruption in their various administrations.
He recently accused his immediate successor, Kufuor, of “desecrating the graveyard” of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah through his terrible handling of the Nkrumah Mausoleum during his tenure.
According to ex-President Rawlings, Kufuor turned Nkrumah’s graveyard which is a national monument serving as a tourist site into a family burial ground when he allowed the wife of Ghana’s first statesman to be buried there.
“Many years later when Dr Kwame Nkrumah’s wife, Fathia Nkrumah also died, former President Kufuor laid her coffin in the same dugout where Nkrumah had been buried and he feigned to have been mourning her and we all fell for it and joined in the mourning with our handkerchiefs wiping our tears,” he fumed.
He also blamed the “Nkrumahists” Mills and Mahama for failing to stop Kufuor from destroying Nkrumah’s legacy.
As a disciplinarian who never tolerated acts of betrayal or hostile criticism during his tenure, the former president’s utterances and posture, according to Victor Smith, are hurting members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
In a conversation on the '21 minutes with KKB' show, the Former High Commissioner to the UK and Ireland accuses Mr. Rawlings of putting himself above the laws of the NDC because he is doing the very things he detested when he was a President.
“Anytime he gets the opportunity he has to knock Kufuor, knock Atta Mills, and knock John Mahama. The only person he’s not hitting in this current administration is the current President,” he observed.
“If anybody else had done that under JJ Rawlings’ reign at the time he was President, oh my God, you won’t even be in the party. You’ll run out of the country. He isn’t the law. There’s a constitution in our party. There’s a constitution in this nation. So if he can use bad words and describe former heads of state who have occupied the same seat as you…is he becoming the law now?” Ambassador Smith added.
