NDC risks losing 2016 elections - Rawlings

Former President Jerry Rawlings has warned that his party, National Democratic Congress, risk losing the 2016 elections if it is not cleansed from within.

“If we do not clean up our party, helping the executive will be truly difficult, and retaining power in 2016 will be very difficult”, Mr. Rawlings warned.

The former president sounded the alarm when he addressed journalists at his Ridge residence in Accra on Monday June 3, 2013 ahead of this year’s commemoration of the June 4, 1979 uprising.

Mr. Rawlings was Chairman of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) which governed from June 4, 1979 to September 24, 1979 after the council forcefully took power in a bloody coup against another military regime, Supreme Military Council.

June 4 came on the heels of a prior abortive coup on May 15, 1979 when Flt. Lt. Jerry Rawlings and other ranks were arrested.

The AFRC executed three former military leaders of Ghana as part of what the regime described as its “house cleaning” exercise.

Those executed were Lt. Gen Afrifa, Gen. I. K. Acheampong and Lt. Gen. Akuffo.

They were killed alongside five other Senior Officers.

Late Dr. Hilla Limann was later elected president on the ticket of the People’s National Party in subsequent elections allowed by the AFRC, thus heralding Ghana into the Third Republic after 100 days of the AFRC’s bloody and iron-fisted rule.

Addressing cadres of the party who converged at his residence on Monday, Mr. Rawlings bemoaned what he described as utter lawlessness and corruption in the country.

He said the values of the June 4 revolution must be restored.

“We do not have to allow the politics of our country to descend to the point where bloodshed and violent revolt become seen as the only means to restore those values”, Mr. Rawlings cautioned.