One of the longest-serving Ministers under the Rawlings regime, Enoch Teye Mensah has disclosed that people often described him and other colleagues who worked with the late Jerry John Rawlings as fools.
The former Member of Parliament for Ningo-Prampram who served as the Mayor of Accra and the Sports Minister under the Rawlings administration noted that his former boss was worth emulating and as such his leadership principles should be upheld.
“You might not like him but in the end, you will see that it was worth emulating him,” E.T Mensah told GTV at the final funeral rites of Rawlings monitored by GhanaWeb.
He added, “Papa J did something fantastic which people need to learn about him. All the people he chose to work with are people who had seen it all before. In leadership, we need to choose strong people who are strong in the head and those are the people he poached.”
According to him, many people complained the former statesman was only using his appointees to serve his selfish interest and not to develop the country.
He added that people eventually attributed members who served under the Rawlings regime as goons who were pushed around by the ex-president.
E.T Mensah said, “those of us who worked around Papa J, they called us fools. They said you guys just allowed him to bully you, but he never bullied anybody.”
Advising the youth of today, E.T Mensah, stated, “It pays to pay your time, you don’t have to rush. We’ve heard it around and we’ve seen it, if you rush you will crush and you will never be able to recover.”
“Whatever you are doing, there will be a day of reckoning, and when the day comes, what you will use to defend yourself is the life that you led. The young ones are too much in a hurry,” he added.
Former MP for Ningo Prampram, E.T Mensah