Mills Speaks On Rawlings And NDC

Former Vice President and NDC Flagbearer, Professor John Evans Atta Mills says he is surprised at the way people think and interpret what ex-President Rawlings says. ''He is a very passionate person who, if is he has anything on his chest, would let it go. He will go all out and say it. This is the man.''

Professor Mills who was speaking an interview with the Independent newspaper further added that ''President Rawlings has shown how passionate he is throughout the period he served as President of this country and will continue to say things that he is passionate about in a manner he did when he was the President''.

Below are excerpts of the interview.

INDEPENDENT: Now to the vexed issue of Rawlings and his pronouncements and his recent claim that he knew of 15 Cabinet Ministers of the current government, who were behind the serial murder of women in 2000. MILLS: I must confess that as a vice-president, I was not privy to all the things that the president knew. The president had access to many sources of information that I did not know.

There were people who reported to him on many issues including intelligence reports that I might not be privy to. Let us admit, a president is a president. A vice does not and would not know everything that the president did or does. I hope at the end of the day, people should appreciate such realistic position that every president is placed.'' Calm but confident, his demeanour in the entire 45-minute or so that the interview lasted at his campaign office at Kuku Hill, Osu, a suburb of Accra, showed ''a man prepared to let it all go.''

INDEPENDENT: ''But Prof. Mills, do you find any truth in the allegations? Any take on some of his utterances or pronouncements?

President Rawlings like any Ghanaian is a citizen of this country with the right to make a statement. It is up to the police to find out whether there is truth in what he said or not.''

Perhaps, by interpretation, the vice-president’s assertion, from hindsight, is based on the police report that the former president was interrogated as an informant when he spoke at an NDC symposium to commemorate the 24th anniversary of the June 4 uprising that he knew about the 15 cabinet ministers who masterminded the killing of the women in 2000.

''Going strictly by the police report, the onus thus lies on the police to investigate the information given them by the former president and not the whistle blower to show those behind the killings,'' a top brass of the NDC who was within reach of the interview spot later told this paper.''

Prof. Mills would further explain the former president’s often weird pronouncements, which sometimes put him (Rawlings) on the edge thus: ''He is a very passionate person who if he has anything on his chest, would let it go. He will go all out and say it. This is the man. Sometimes, I am surprised at the way people think or interpret what president Rawlings says.''

''The ruling on the Quality Grain scandal by the Fast Track Court, although unlike the Kangaroo courts that were set up during the AFRC/PNDC juntas, which decisions are being challenged by many Ghanaians today, has come under a barrage of criticisms by the NDC for the harsh sentences it passed on some of its top brass, who incidentally, all worked at the Ministry of Finance.''

Are the criticisms fair? What does Prof. Mills thinks?

''I am afraid, the way we are jailing our finance ministers, there would be time that nobody would be willing to accept to be finance minister.''

In the opinion of Prof. Mills, the finance portfolio is a very sensitive one, in that the minister almost always deals with huge sums of money and other contractual obligations that come with very huge amounts, where in such instances there could be losses that might not necessarily be the doing of the sector minister.

He questioned how one could anticipate that one would incur losses in a project that is only on a drawing board.

''How many people can anticipate that there will be losses? How can you know whether the project you are about to undertake is viable or not? It is not possible to foresee in all these instances,'' Prof. Mills stated.

INDEPENDENT: But how is the Mills’ campaign faring?

MILLS: I must say so far so good. I’ve been to about 100 villages in the Central Region and the response was encouraging. I went to places that I never visited during the last elections. I had a relatively short period of campaigning.

The main idea was to introduce myself and to see to it that the party’s structures are in place.''

According to Prof. Mills, he got the media involved in wherever he had campaigned, adding that through his interactions, he found from the people what their needs were.

He noted that he was not oblivious with the wishes of the people and explained to them that was the more reason why the NDC party had adopted the more human friendly Social Democracy ideology.

The former vice-president hinted how villages he visited are saddled with poverty and felt sorry that the government is also compounding their plight with some harsh economic decisions. ''Can you imagine a bottle of kerosene sells at ?6,000 in the villages? Prof. Mills asked rhetorically.

He also disclosed that he has a perfect relationship with Dr. Kwesi Botchwey who contested him for the flagbearership of the NDC. Dr. Botchwey was selected as the head of the economic management team of Prof. Mills’ campaign team, but according to the former vice-president, Dr. Botchwey has not been able to perform because of his busy schedule.