Ashittey’s Suit against Rawlings Has Teeth

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Jan. 23, 2016
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

I have no doubt, whatsoever, that Dr. Zanetor Rawlings has the requisite traction to retain the Korle-Klottey parliamentary seat for the National Democratic Congress (NDC), and I have written a couple of columns to affirm this fact. Well, she is partly capable of winning because she has name recognition, being the eldest child of Chairman Jerry John Rawlings and his megalomaniacal wife and faithful partner-in-crime, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings.

Then also, Dr. Rawlings has amply demonstrated that she is strategically savvy for the job. She has been actively involved in charitable causes, both before and after declaring her intention to gun for the Korle-Klottey parliamentary seat; and just the other day, for example, she hosted a health-screening exercise for members of her constituency. Couple the preceding with the fact that Lawyer Philip Addison continues to create the sort of rancorous waves that are highly unlikely to redound favorably to the credit of whoever emerges as the winner of the court-ordered parliamentary-primary election rerun in Korle-Klottey on the ticket of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), and Dr. Rawlings’ chances at grabbing the Korle-Klottey seat are further remarkably enhanced.

At best, Lawyer Philip Addison may escape by the proverbial skin of his teeth, assuming he wins the right to run for the Korle-Klottey parliamentary seat on the ticket of the main opposition New Patriotic Party come November. I have personally expressed the opinion that having quite creditably acquitted himself in the 2012 Presidential-Election Petition, Mr. Addison considerably elevated himself to the enviable status of a statesman and ought not to have stooped so low as to roughhouse with the local Korle-Klottey NPP Abongo Boys. Granted, there is quite a bit of loot to be amassed in Parliament, beginning with the advancement of the so-called Auto- and Accommodation Loan for all MPs-Elect.

Still, Addison would have stood a better chance of decently making it handsomely under an Akufo-Addo/Bawumia Presidency. Unless, of course, from the vantage point of his perch on state side, he sees things much differently from yours truly. At any rate, one can hardly gainsay the fact that Nii Armah Ashittey’s suit against the Rawlingses’ daughter has quite a bit of teeth and meat on it, contrary to what Lawyer Tamakloe, Zanetor’s counsel, would have the rest of us believe.

But, of course, his chances of getting Dr. Rawlings dislodged, or disqualified, squarely hinges on whether Mr. Ashittey can forensically prove several things about the purported irregularity of the candidacy of the 30-something-year-old medical intern who handily defeated him in the party’s 2016 parliamentary primary last year beyond the proverbial reasonable doubt.

The first of such questions, we are told, is that at the time of the filing of her parliamentary-election nomination, Dr. Rawlings was not officially registered as a bona fide member of the National Democratic Congress. If, indeed, as it was widely alleged, Dr. Rawlings’ name could not be found in the Voters’ Register at the time that she ran against and trounced Nii Armah Ashittey, then, of course, she ought to have been promptly disqualified from contesting by both local party officials and the Electoral Commission. Not surprisingly, Mr. Ashittey is also suing the EC for dereliction of duty. He ought to also be suing the Korley-Klottey executive membership of the National Democratic Congress who, evidently, allowed Dr. Rawlings to literally get away with murder.

In defense of the foregoing charge against her, Dr. Rawlings has allegedly claimed that it was her mother who had registered her as a bona fide member of the National Democratic Congress, and that such registration occurred about a decade or so ago. Even if the latter claim gets to hold water, there would still remain the equally relevant question of whether she has been up-to-date with the periodic payment of her dues as a member of the National Democratic Congress in good standing prior to her decision to file her nomination papers and contest as a parliamentary-primary candidate on the ticket of the National Democratic Congress. She must be able to submit authentic documentation to the preceding effect.

We must also point out the fact that at the time of filing her nomination papers, Dr. Rawlings’ mother and former First Lady, Konadu Rawlings, had effectively vacated her membership of the National Democratic Congress and gone on to found and become Presidential Candidate of her own splinter party, the so-called National Democratic Party (NDP). What the preceding means is that very likely for at least some three or four years now, Nana Konadu has not paid the membership dues of her old party for her eldest daughter, assuming that prior to her 2010 decision to renounce her membership of the NDC, in the wake of her massive presidential primary election walloping by then-President John Evans Atta-Mills, she had been a paid-up member of the NDC.

At any rate, at 35-plus years old, Dr. Rawlings is old enough to be personally held accountable for her party membership. But what makes this present lawsuit very different from the one recently dismissed by an Accra High Court judge is the fact that this time around, the plaintiff is the incumbent Korle-Klottey NDC-MP and thus an interested party who is directly and adversely affected by the “wrongful” election of Dr. Rawlings as NDC-MP Candidate for Election 2016.

In other words, the hope here is that Nii Armah Ashittey would have exhausted himself of all the available party channels for resolving the Zanetor Rawlings Conundrum by the time this case is called up for adjudication.
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