A period of two years and three months, dubbed ‘twenty seven months in office’ in Ghana’s post-Nkrumah political history is emerging to hold a vital determining key to whether a popularly elected leader will remain and continue to be in office or not within the constitutionally mandated term of office, however, usurper and putschist John Rawlings is exempted from this unofficial seemingly recurring rule for sundry reasons. To wit, both Professor K A Busia and Dr Hilla Limman fell victim to this uncanny situation. Ex-President Kufuor would not have been able to jump over this hurdle of ingenious incipient and apparent political watershed had he not kept a vigil National Security, thanks to Hon. Francis Poku and his security aides. At the crucial 27 months in office of John Mills’ administration, from within his own political group, and interestingly the group that has the notoriety of breeding all the 27 months anarchists such as the Kwame Baah, Agbo, Selormey, Aghampong group and John Rawlings etc group, pressure stronger than he can withstand has mounted on him to a magnitude that he surely threw in the towel only to be persuasively forced back to do the required form-picking, indicating his intention to contest his NDC’s leadership race. In his state of unwillingness, he could only be flattered with a fake show of support with organised pomp that further unveils his vanity and low approval rating. John Mills perceives the ‘fruit’ he has sought for not just too big to go down his svelte throat, it is very hard with sharp rough edges; he is scarred same is deleterous to his image and health which makes him more feel more emetic with what he has already consumed. When he had had enough of battering by Cuba’s Sugar Ramos in a 1965 tipped to win boxing bout, Ghana’s Floyd Robertson did the honourable thing by refusing to go any further in the contest against the aspiration and expectation of Ghanaians. Like Mills, though one time vice-President, he knew little about the nitty-gritty of holding that high office hence took the main job for a child’s play; now he has had enough of battering and may not be able to hold the fort any longer as may be required of him to complete his mandated four years first term, let alone vying for promotion to a second term.

In considering Ghana’s socio-economic and political trilemma, down the political landscape John Rawlings and his followers see a mass of indoctrinated ill-informed, uncultured and undisciplined Ghanaian society the P/NDC has created over a previous continuous 19 years of so-called Aluta misgovernaunce who understand nothing but violence and thuggery under the banner of revolution which they assess to have to their advantage. In my estimation, many of those Aluta enthusiasts who stooped to those low levels of stupidity have grown wiser over the years with a silent vow that “never again” however, there are still a few obstinate scoundrels out there in obnubilation, hence ever ready to follow the Rawlingses in their mischievous aspirations.

If we live in a country where people hold themselves out to hold public office only to misgovern against the directions of the laws of the land because they make and feel themselves over and above the laws but same are protected by lawless sycophantic thugs, then John and Konadu Agyeman Rawlings can muster the effrontery to abuse and insult Ghanaians once again. In any positive thinking and forward-looking political society, politics is divorced from crime or abuse of privileges; this is why members of UK Parliament who abuse their privileges which are not even coded in the statute books but exist as regulations go to jail for committing such abuses. Lord Archer, a former Conservative Party Chairman served a jail term for lying. In Ghana, the Rawlingses lie for free and get public protection for lying. This shows the level of backwardness that our society is being pushed over the years. Instead of standing trial for theft and fraud against Ghana, by reason of an idiotic protectionist stance held by some mishallowed Ghanaians taken for their followers, John and Konadu Rawlings appear to be taking Ghanaians for granted because Ghanaians have short-lived memory. It is just too strange to find sacrilegist Jerry John Rawlings who destroyed a Mosque appealing to Moslems for their en masse moral and spiritual support; a desecration that would hang the death penalty around his neck if it had happened in any other Islamic community. John and Konadu Rawlings recollect all these events through which they have passed with impunity but have rather received adulations in extremis and so beat their chest and scornfully say to themselves: “They are senseless brutes so we can do it again but this time, severer and for ever”. The fact is that John Rawlings is desperate; he has realised that political power is slipping out of the grips of John Mills which if it does, the NDC would be doomed to oblivion rather to his own detriment. However the harm is already done through his own selfishness and self-interest therefore whether Konadu leads or Mills leads there is darkness instead of light at the end of the tunnel. Konadu is bound to lose in the primaries to Mills however this is a situation that the Rawlingses wouldn’t want. Will they secede from the existing NDC if Mills wins or will they humble themselves to remote-controlled Mills by the Awhois? Ghanaians must think fast to reason out, if any, why John Rawlings readily falls out with everybody who comes closer to them.

Adreba Kwaku Abrefa Damoa, London UK