Rawlings May Be Right!

By Nana Kow Blankson

There have been many things that former President Rawlings has done and continues to do which I fiercely detest. In fact, I hated it when he pushed his wife, Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, to contest sitting President Mills for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) 2012 flagbearership. I have also not been too happy with Rawlings lambasting President Mills at every turn of event, saying that he never listens to him. And I will never forgive Rawlings if he fails to campaign for NDC’s success in the upcoming elections. But I cannot take it away from Rawlings certain things that he has been saying, which gradually is coming home to roost at the entrance of the NDC big umbrella.

When the NDC won the 2008 elections, I remember vividly Rawlings warning to the NDC bigwigs and the party faithful in general that they should be very careful about people who will try to infiltrate the party to seek certain favours. Rawlings is noted for saying over and over again since then that if the NDC does not keep its eyes open such infiltrators who are just wolves in sheep’s clothing will swarm the corridors of power, pretend that they are sympathizers of the NDC and seek mouth watering favours at the expense of the true NDC members and especially foot-soldiers who campaigned fiercely and relentlessly to ensure the party’s success in 2008. I also remember that the NDC foot-soldiers have also been echoing these sentiments over and over again but some bigwigs have resorted to branding them as “cry babies”.

For the past three years that the NDC has been in power, this wise counsel from Rawlings has not been heeded to. In fact, some NDC party bigwigs have thrown this caveat from Rawlings to the gutters. And what we are seeing and been seeing is the horde of National Patriotic Party (NPP) businessmen who have suddenly changed party colours, trooping to the NDC corridors of power to seek big contracts and goodwill. Some of these NPP businessmen, who had nothing to do with the NDC when it was struggling in the opposition wilderness for eight solid years, are today walking at the NDC access strip with the entire swagger and behaving as if without them the NDC will not exist.

Breaking News!!! The NDC has been struggling for the past one month trying to find its lost voice. Their backs have been pinned to the wall for no fault of theirs but the struggle which started way back in December 2011 continues. Why will they not struggle since many in the party does not care a hoot about what happens to the party’s fortunes in the upcoming 2012 election? And I dare predict that there will be many more struggles ahead or to put it bluntly many rivers to cross unless the party bigwigs begin to heed to wise advice. And did I say the NDC has been struggling for the past one month? Of course, they have been struggling big time and this is making Rawlings look too good to be ignored.

Do you remember Rawlings’ wise counsel that the NDC should purge itself of infiltrators? If the NDC had listened and listened very well, the party will not today be reeling under severe pressure (Ras Kimono). There is this Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome whose company Vamed/Waterville Engineering won a CAN 2008 contract, but President Kufour down the lane found something culpable to terminate it. Mr. Woyome took the case to court for wrongful termination of contract and won the case. Therefore, in 2010 a High Court ordered the State to pay an amount of GH¢42 million in judgment debt to Mr. Woyomefor the illegal termination of his contract by former President Kufour.

I will not go to the density of the Woyome’s case today. I will comment on it in another article. Mr. Woyome has been referred variously by NPP stalwarts as an NDC kingpin or bankroller. Others have labeled Woyome as a die-hard NDC, but snippets of information that keeps filtering into the chicken cook of the NDC and to a larger extent the Ghanaian public domain is that Mr. Woyome may after all not be an NDC member. Mr. Woyome is known by many, many people as an NPP man who played various roles for the NPP during Kufour’s eight years regime.

This statement of fact has even been echoed by a no less person than the General Secretary of the NPP, Mr. Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie (Sir John). But Woyome is the man who today is being paraded as a so-called NDC bankroller. If the NDC bigwigs who courted Woyome because of his so-called money have done some due diligence or have at least grudgingly and under the cover of darkness paid attention to Rawlings’ admonishment, the NDC party will not start the 2012 election year still reeling under severe untold pressures from all fronts.

There is this issue which I also want to bring to the notice of the NDC bigwigs and the party faithful. There is this businessman who is also parading the air corridors of the NDC today with all the pomposity one can think of. He is having a big sway on the bigwigs of the NDC. I have no doubt that he is an astute businessman who has employed many Ghanaians who otherwise may have been on the streets looking for jobs. But is that the only measuring rod or reason why he alone is being loaded with contracts upon contracts at the expense of other qualified NDC people? If that is the only reason then I will say that, if physical dimensions are the only deciding factors, the elephant would have been the king of the jungle.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am talking about no other person than the famous Chief Executive Officer of Zoomlion Ghana Limited, Mr. Joseph Siaw Agyepong. This man needs no introduction and in fact you do not need to be a sage or palm reader to know which party he belongs to. He is a die in the wool NPP. I will even qualify it as a Big Time NPP. Yet, Joseph Agyepong is today the main man of the NDC bigwigs. Every poverty alleviation programme that the NDC is initiating or have initiated has been channeled through Zoomlion with NDC party faithful licking their stinking wounds.

The NDC government as part of its poverty alleviation programmes has established a couple of enterprises to train Ghanaians in employable skills and also provide immediate employment to others. Talk about the Local Enterprises and Skills Development Program (LESDEP), Youth Enterprises and Skills Development Centre (YESDEC), Zoil Services Limited and Eco Brigade.

But can you just believe that one company Zoomlion has solely been given the mouth-watering responsibility of managing all these four laudable projects being implemented by the NDC under the Better Ghana Concept? LESDEP gives financial assistance to its trainees and also assists in selecting the most profitable business opportunities for the trainees. YESDEC facilitates the acquisition of entrepreneurial skills that lead to the creation of sustainable businesses, by the youth in agricultural activities, manufacturing, services and environmental sanitation. Zoil Services Limited also a subsidiary of Zoomlion Ghana Limited, is responsible for oil spill response, management and treatment and the training of lifeguards to find solutions to the frequent boat disasters on the Volta Lake. Eco Brigade, another project being managed by Zoomlion involves the cleaning and restoring of the vegetative cover of Ghana’s beaches from Aflao to Half Assini.

I am not against Zoomlion. I am not anti-business nor am I against business development and growth in my dear country. But can anybody convince me to believe that Zoomlion is the only company in the whole wide Ghana that is solely capable of managing of these important projects by the NDC government? Even before somebody makes a pitch to convince me I will say a big no. There are equally good NDC businessmen who could have been given such responsibilities other than loading all to Zoomlion, a man who knows where his heart is in terms of party affiliation. Mark 4:25 clearly echoes what is burning my heart today, “Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him."

There is one more thing I would want to drum home to the NDC. This involves the printing industry. There are many Ghanaian printers who were branded as NDC men and therefore denied jobs upon jobs that they bid for during the Kufour regime. Therefore, with the coming into power of the NDC, many of these printers thought that their woes may be over. But they were wrong. Printers, who collaborated with Kufour in denying so-called NDC printers jobs during his tenure in office, are today the same printers in bed with the NDC. Beware of the infiltrators, Rawlings warned!

Sometimes NDC foot-soldiers and Rawlings make a lot of noise. In fact, they at times become so noisy that NDC people fail to digest some of the minutest things they say to understand what they are actually talking about. I myself, I am guilty as I find the foot-soldiers and Rawlings very noisy and annoying sometimes. But recent events should give the NDC food for thought. It should give the NDC a wake-up call to guard against infiltrators.

The NDC bigwigs must know one thing. There will always be a bigger difference between the loyalties of the infiltrators towards the NDC party as against the foot-soldiers towards the NDC party. I bet you, while the loyalty of the NDC infiltrators will largely tilt towards the bigwigs in the party that of the NDC foot-soldiers, to a greater extent, will lie with the NDC party. That is the bottom line.

I must painfully say that former President Rawlings may be right after all, when he warned about infiltrators. Every governing party looks out for its party faithful. It’s the norm in both so-called First and Third worlds. The NPP portrayed it all for us to see. It was very glaring. But this seems to be missing in the NDC. What went wrong? If today the chips are down or if the NDC finds itself in opposition in the upcoming elections, they will know where the loyalties of the infiltrators are. It will never be with the NDC, I predict. This is why I must painfully conclude that, Rawlings May be Right After All.

nkowblankson@yahoo.com