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General News of Friday, 2 April 2004

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Rawlings Booms At Teshie

Below is a transcript of what ex-President Jerry Rawlings said at an interaction with some members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) at Teshie last week.

?Have you all registered? I?m pleading with you if you have not registered, please go and do so.

?And we are advising the electoral officers to stop the foolish acts of sending limited number of registration forms to NDC strongholds whilst an adequate number are sent to NPP strongholds. My brothers and sisters, otherwise, this will brew trouble. We will not wait till December: the registration period will lead to problems if they don?t sit up for the right thing to be done.

?My brothers and sisters, as had already been said by previous speakers, especially E.T. Mensah, what is going on is grace consequences. They themselves know that they have done a lot of damage to the country. I am not here to insult them And if I describe them as thieves, it is not an insult, because so they are. If I describe them as liars, it is not an insult because they are indeed liars. They are murderers, and a day is coming when Quansah who is languishing in jail at Nsawam will speak

?And excuse me to day, if you were deceived and hence you voted against us out of power, let?s assume it was God?s intervention to serve as an eye-opener for us.

?Now for the three years that the NPP have been in power, see the hardship they have inflicted upon Ghanaians, People are being oppressed like slaves.

?Excuse me, we are not slaves and neither are they slave masters. It is only God who deserves worship. God did not create man to be worshipped like what they are practicing.

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, we have a few more days to go. I urge every one of you to go and registered.

?We have borne the lies and the theft enough. The resentment against them let us tolerate it: after all we are not on the homestretch (the Osu Curve).December is just around the corner and I want to see a massive victory of Atta Mills and Kufuor with a margin which has never been seen before in the history of this country.

?So that we will prove to them that, next time around, if you want to rule Ghanaians, excuse me, you should acknowledge that we human beings and treat us with respect and not with such indignity.

?It?s getting late but there will be more of such occasion when we talk again. Tomorrow, I?ll be traveling to observe things, I?m therefore pleading with you, the leaders here, to lodge your complaints with the EC staff, the Electoral Commission (EC) to stop what he is doing or he should advise his staff who are engaged in foolish acts to desist from that else the election days (sic) will not be over today or tomorrow.

?Because if it claims that coups and revolts are abhorred and thumbs are to be used, then the exercise should be carried out with transparency.

The foolish acts should be stopped and the exercise conducted with openness so that we will use our thumbs. But if the thumbs will not be allowed to bring out the truth then it results in trouble. Is that not true? Thank you very much and may God bless you all?.