Former President Jerry John Rawlings The Prophet

The maxim among the Anlo folks, “when your grandfather or grandmother tells you things that are historical, do not say that you want to consult your father or mother about its veracity” is a fact about life that should not be lost upon any discerning mind. Put in another way, it is a fact about life that the proverbial beard cannot narrate historical facts to the eyelash. The eyelash is older and has witnessed much more in life than the beard.
The foregoing proverbs vividly describe the situation of our sitting president, John Evans Atta-Mills, unfortunately. The recent high profile judgment debt paid to Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome, a situation that has led to the dismissal of the former Attorney-General, Mr. Martin Amidu, and the resignation of the former Minister of Education, Mr. Betty Mould-Idrissu, can only be described as self-inflicted wounds that would finally lead the NDC into obscurity.
But in all this, one thing stand very clear. The former President Jerry John Rawlings has been finally vindicated a thousand and one times. Having been a head of state for 11 years and a president for 8 years (a total of 19 years as the leader of Ghana), nobody can discount or underrate the wise counsel of the former president with regard to matters of statecraft, especially when it borders on corruption. He has ruled Ghana longer than any of her leaders in her 54-year journey as a country. His reservoir of experience would have been very essential to the current administration. Indeed, he had worked with all manner of characters – from the P.V. Obengs whose interest comes before any other consideration to the Kofi Totobi-Quakyi’s whose stock in trade is scheming and manipulations of the highest order – to understand the dynamics of human manipulation from a political perspective.
Contrary to this expectation, a so-called clean president and father for all thought he has found a new brand of politicians who are ready to also be clean just as he claims to be. But in the end, we are all witnesses to all the manipulations including attempts to swindle the state of Ghana to huge sums of money that could have revamped many of her ailing industries and create jobs for her teeming number of unemployed youth.
With that said, I strongly believe that indeed, Jerry John Rawlings in all his eccentricity just meant good for Mills and his administration based on what we all know today. If Mills had listened to his mentor who had made all the sacrifices by lifting him from nowhere, standing by him through thick and thin, and ensuring he became the president of Ghana, things would have been different today.
But Atta-Mills chose to stab the man who made him who he is today and plunged the affairs of our dear country into the hands of known state wreckers who have been looking for opportunities to rape the state. The Woyome Scandal is just one. Snippets of information picked indicate there are many more issues bordering on corruption that will shock the Ghanaian public as we head towards the 2012 general elections.
When President Rawlings started cautioning and warning President Mills and his government about the corruption, the arrogance, the ineptitude and other ills in the government, many took him for granted and branded him a fastidious individual who is never satisfied with anybody except himself. Today, here we are with corruption around the neck of the NDC and its officials like an albatross. Some of us have even decided to pad our ears to avoid hearing news about some of these high level forms of corruption, but the stench is so strong that if you even plug your ears, you cannot pad your nose, so you smell the stench.
The report of the EOCO on Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome has just been released and we are waiting to see where we head from here as a country. Where are the rented press – Kwesi Pratt, Raymond Archer, Alhaji Bature, Kokonsa - and the Mills advisors extraordinaire - Bernard Allotey Jacobs,OKudzeto Ablakwa and Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome, among others?
We hope that President John Evans Atta-Mills, who has always been parading himself as God’s servant, will wake up to the realities of governance and spend the last few months of his administration to reflect on the kind of leadership he has provided Ghanaians with in the last few years. President Mills must be reminded that governance is not about how best you can pontificate and display your holiness when there are people digging deep behind you. When Christ got angry with criminals in the temple of Jerusalem, he overturned the whole temple. What stopped you from cleansing yourself and distancing yourself from criminals? It is even too late now, but we hope you heed this last minute advice before you are finally isolated.
In conclusion, one can only ask President Rawlings to take consolation in the following quotation: “Though those that are betray’d Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor stands in worse case of woe.” -- William Shakespeare

Eric Nyatepe
Social Democratic Forum