Rawlings Is My Idol - Woyome

The self-acclaimed bankroller of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Alfred Agbesi Woyome, who is on trial over the payment of GH¢51.2 million made to him, without a contract with the state, has made an interesting turnaround by idolizing former president Jerry John Rawlings, the man he spat on in the run-up to the NDC’s Sunyani Congress last year.

According to Woyome, the treatment being meted out to former President Rawlings was so terrible that it could immensely erode the fortunes of the NDC in the December elections.

Recent reports by the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) said the Woyome scandal was a bad case for the NDC and that it would cause the defeat of President Atta Mills in the December 7 elections.

But Woyome has called on all and sundry in the party to make peace with the former President and his wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, in order to restore the unity in the party.

Woyome said: “As far as God gives me life, I will make sure that ex-President Rawlings, who is the founder, a good friend and a man I respect, gets the utmost respect he deserves in the party, in the Volta Region and across the entire nation. We cannot do without him in the upcoming elections. He is the only one who can lead Atta Mills and the NDC to retain power in the December election.”

He confirmed in a follow-up interview with Daily Guide, after he had made similar statements at a durbar at Gbi-Kpeme in the Hohoe Municipality of the Volta Region last weekend.

Woyome had attended the funeral of his wife’s aunt, Apollonia Akosua Ekpi, aged 65 years.

His wife, Mama Wordegoi, is the queen-mother of Gbi-Kpeme.

The embattled financier of the NDC is reported to have asked all members who had for one reason or the other removed the portraits or paraphernalia of former President Rawlings from their rooms or wherever, to immediately re-post them and to also wear Rawlings’ T-shirts.

Sources close to Woyome told Daily Guide he stressed that President Mills, his bosom friend, should not be blamed for the legal tango he finds himself in.

He however indicated that he had serious reservations about President Mills’s posture in the ongoing fracas over the GH¢51.2 million judgement debt and his being put on trial.

Woyome said he was unhappy that the President, being the chief executive of the country, was indecisive on the ongoing judgement debt saga, allowing his rights to be trampled upon and making it look like he was a bad person.

He noted that President Mills could not be blamed but some ‘evil hands’ close to him in the party had connived with the opposition NPP to destroy his hard-earned reputation.

Woyome was optimistic that the truth would prevail in court because in the first place, neither the President the NDC nor Betty Mould-Iddrisu paid the money to him, but a court of competent jurisdiction ordered the payment.

He noted that considering the level of disunity, quarrels and apathy in the party, the NDC needed ex-President Rawlings badly to re-unite it.

According to him, “Rawlings in the only one who can galvanise all the factions in the party and rally the NDC to victory in the December 2012 elections.”

Many party bigwigs in the NDC and political analysts find Woyome’s sudden respect and praise-singing of Mr. Rawlings quite interesting because a few months ago, he had thrown some sour words at him. He was also one of the many who, at that time, believed the NDC could survive without the founder, Mr. Rawlings.

It will be recalled that Woyome described Rawlings’s aide, Kofi Adams, and Siki Abibu, the Volta Regional deputy youth organiser of NDC, as Togolese.

He also described Rawlings as a man on a self-destruct mission for supporting his wife, Nana Konadu, to contest President Mills in the NDC’s flag-bearership contest last year.

He also said President Rawlings’s desire to make Nana Konadu a president was a clandestine way of getting back into power which was tantamount to a coup d’état against President Mills.

Top NDC officials who spoke to Daily Gide on condition of anonymity noted that Woyome’s current double standards were not surprising because he had been abandoned by his close friends and confidents including President Mills and many top party officials, particularly in the Get Atta Mills Endorsed (GAME) camp.

One of them said, “Woyome is only looking for deliverance and he thinks associating himself to president Rawlings is the only way out, but I doubt if that will work.”