Rawlings mourns Adu Boahene

Former President Jerry Rawlings on Monday led a delegation of NDC bigwigs to offer their condolence to the family of the late Prof. Albert Adu Boahene.

Prof. Adu Boahene died last week after years of battling stroke. He was an avid critic of President Rawlings? erstwhile Provisional National Defence Council and is widely credited to have broken the culture of silence imposed under Mr. Rawlings? military regime.

The professor challenged Mr. Rawlings in the first presidential election of the fourth Republic and lost.

In a short tribute, Mr. Rawlings described Professor Adu Boahene as a man of integrity explaining that even though they disagreed he had a lot of respect for him.

?Prof Adu Boahene was not a man I had much of an encounter with but I always listened to his lectures, his criticisms of me. There were those I disagreed with and there were those I took in good faith. But the most important and interesting aspects of what I knew about him was when my wife actually brought to my attention that he was a fairly good visitor to her father.

"J.O.T. Agyeman's level of stature was such that if you did not measure up to a certain minimum of integrity, he would not entertain you. I have no right to say this. I am not trying to be presumptuous but I?m just trying to put across the fact that I learnt to accept Professor Adu Boahene irrespective of some of the exchanges that took place because of his relationship with Mr. Joe Oti Agyeman.

?Today he is no more. It is unfortunate, we will mourn him but then there are those who will also celebrate his life. With that I wanna say to Madam, to the entire family, put your faith in God, there is very little we can do. He is the one who gives. He decides when to take away. God bless you, Madam?, he said.

Mr. Rawlings called on politicians to engage in what he called clean and constructive politics saying he was unable to visit Prof. Adu Boahene when he was on his sick bed because of the politics hate currently perpetuated by the government.

?I am saying that I found this disheartening. I had difficulties coming here precisely because of the point I just made that whenever people visit me, the government starts chasing them around with vehicles, harassing them. If I visit someone, they follow me and they become the objects of harassment?.

?Today I have to come here only when this man is dead and gone. It is regrettable, it is painful. I have always wanted to come and I would have wished I had come earlier. I would have wished that some of us would stop being so petty and to grow and to have the kind of stature that some of us demonstrated when we were in office, the kind of stature he also had, that we can engage in diametrically opposed issues when it comes to politics without doing the unflinching mortal damage on one another?, he said.

Mr. Rawlings was accompanied by his wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings. Other members of the delegation included, Party Chairman Dr. Kwabena Agyei, Deputy Minority leader Edward Doe Adjaho, Propaganda Secretary Fifi Kwetey, NDC Council of Elders Capt Klein Sowu, Ohene Kena, Victor Gbeho and Dr. Mary Grant.