Rawlings dares NDC: Sack me

The founder of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), former President Jerry John Rawlings, has said he is hardly perturbed by calls for his expulsion from the party.

According to him, the NDC officials calling for his head were clearly not aware of the implications of what they were advocating. “They can attempt it,” he told Oman Fm in an interview last Thursday.

Mr. Rawlings recounted his commitments and the grave sacrifices he had made for the NDC to get to its current high-profile pedestal.

In the interview, he decried the actions of the “elements” in the NDC who were allegedly pretending to show their commitments of the party, yet secretly, their activities worked to the detriment of the party.

According to the NDC founder, these “elements” should rather be the ones expunged from the party.

Jerry Rawlings is being hounded by his party for showing up at the delegates' congress of the NDC' s breakaway party, the National Democratic Party (NDP), in support of his wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings who was elected unopposed as the NDP's flag bearer.

Some of the party members said that he had been bewitched and that he was under a spell cast by Nana Konadu.

Nana Konadu had, for several months, been linked to the NDP, but there was no official confirmation of this speculation until she was finally given the top job of the party last Saturday at the Baba Yara Stadium in Kumasi at the delegates' congress.

To pave way for the flagbearership, Mrs. Rawlings resigned her membership of the NDC and relinquished her executive position as a vice chairperson.

By virtue of his wife's association with NDP Jerry Rawlings was also linked to the party, but he had denied this, even though he maintained that he would give his wife all the necessary support in her political endeavour.

He was the special guest at the Saturday event where he predicted doom for the NDC. Since the NDC recaptured power in 2009, Jerry Rawlings has been at daggers drawn with the party he founded because he believes there are some corrupt elements within the party who are actively working to make the ruling party unpopular.

He has variously described those people as “Greedy Bastards”, with Sharp Teeth”.

He said the activities of those faceless people had driven him to the point where he had become the strongest critic of his own party.