Former President John Rawlings
He does not seem to get it, either because he is too deeply steeped in his own blighted sense of self-righteousness or he is simply morally spent beyond redemption.
This is why Chairman Jerry John Rawlings continues to point accusing fingers at his successors to the presidency except himself, the veritable and thoroughgoing corrupt political blacksmith of Ghana’s Fourth Republic.
If he were Ghanaian of Akan descent or extraction, no doubt, he would have since long noticed that anytime he points the index-finger of his right hand, accusatorily at his successors, the other three squarely point toward himself.
Once again, Chairman Rawlings has publicly and infelicitously accused the man whose otherwise diffident and lethargic presidential ambitions he doggedly pushed through three electoral seasons, as the imperious founding-father of the corrupt political culture of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) – (See “Corruption in NDC Began Under Mills – Rawlings” Citifmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 7/10/16). The problem that Chairman Rawlings has here is that President John Evans Atta-Mills has been deceased for some four years now, and so cannot respond to such a serious charge or fight back.
Fortunately, however, the political track-record of both the National Democratic Congress, as a whole, and the latter’s individual leaders is there for all who care to see, even if President Mills’ closest associates and friends may not either be willing to or find it necessary to publicly joust with Chairman Rawlings in defense of the man whose integrity the founding-father of the NDC staunchly championed and whose presidential candidacy Chairman Rawlings peremptorily imposed on the party via what became widely known as the Swedru Declaration.
And so we can only be left wondering just what kind of responsible leader would impose a thoroughgoing corrupt successor on both his own party and the nation at large.
In other words, the man who imposed the former University of Ghana’s tax-law professor on the membership of the National Democratic Congress cannot justifiably claim to be innocent of the deleterious results his own decision-making.
In the politics of ethics, this is called gross leadership irresponsibility.
Indeed, even as I write, the eldest daughter of the country’s longest-reigning military dictator is engaged in a legal battle that were the rule of law and justice known to be afforded high premium in Ghana, Dr. Zenator Agyeman-Rawlings will have absolutely no chance of winning.
This is one striking instance of corruption in which the AK-47- and pistol-packing former Ghana Airforce’s flight-lieutenant who savagely shot his way to fame and power in June 1979 and, yet again, to fame, power and fortune on December 31, 1981 epically fails to fully appreciate.
Recently, for example, Mr. Rawlings hit the electioneering campaign trail with his daughter, with the sole objective of securing her the parliamentary seat of the Klottey-Korle Constituency, Central-Accra, knowing full well that Dr. Zenator Agyeman-Rawlings was neither a registered member of the National Democratic Congress, on whose ticket she had been certified to run by party’s ever-scheming General-Secretary, Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, a former Rawlings deputy cabinet appointee, nor a dues-paying member of the NDC.
If such flagrant breach of election laws, at both the party and national levels, is not tantamount to political corruption of the highest order, the dear reader may kindly advise yours truly just what this sort of gross political misconduct is.
And yet, Chairman Rawlings has smugly looked on while his own daughter brashly, gratuitously and wastefully bulldozed her way through the courts, hell-bent on clinching a parliamentary seat she legally does not deserve.
What sort of responsible and accountable leader is Chairman Rawlings that reserves him the right and moral authority to impugn the leadership integrity of his late successor? Chairman Rawlings also claims that his wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, split from the NDC in order to form her so-called National Democratic Party (NDP) as a result of the shameless and facile encouragement and practice of rank corruption on the watch of President Mills.
But, of course, all the reliable evidence points to a megalomaniacal Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings’ attempting to hijack the NDC and the gubernatorial apparatus of Ghana because this psychological basket case zanily believed the NDC party machinery to be the bona fide property of the bloody couple.
Indeed, it was the inexcusably primitive and narcissistic and megalomaniacal decision of the Rawlingses to treat the NDC and Ghana as their piggybank, or private property, that prompted a livid Mr. Asiedu-Nketia to publicly opine that “In the past the NDC belonged to somebody and his wife; but today it is a real national political party.” Our elders have a saying that “The rotting of any fish begins with the head.”
I hope somebody charitable would explain this age-old Akan proverb to the man.