NDC supporters need free SHS urgently!!!

When it comes to contemporary Ghanaian politics, former president Rawlings is on a pedestal no other Ghanaian has ever, and will ever reach in our nation’s history. As a 33year old army officer, he seized power through the force of arms in 1979, handed over to a democratically elected president Hilla Liman, only to return to the helm of governance through another military coup in the dying embers of 1981.He then decided to consolidate himself in power by institutionalization of many decrees that sought to cow the citizens into submission so he could have a modicum of personal peace and security to enable perpetuate himself in power.
He did this with utmost success by way of three consecutive years of nation-wide dusk-to-dawn curfew, suppression of the press and generalized intimidatory atmosphere. Those were the day of Peoples’ Defense Committees (PDCs) where official bogus bureaucratic bottle-necks were completely done away with, and in its place, was swift instant justice. The era where justice always happened to be on the side of only the rich and powerful, was done away with and ordinary citizens could also get some form of justice.
I personally had an experience of that style of quick dispensation of justice, without the bogus ‘go and come’ syndrome, when a man wanted to cheat me at Mankessim and I reported him at the office of Peoples’ Defense Committee. I remember I had then passed common entrance exams and was getting reading to enter secondary school and my mother had gone to make a deposit for a truck and chop-box with a shop owner in Mankessim.
Now, when the time was getting close for me to go to school and therefore wanted to take delivery of those items, the man kept playing hide-and-seek with me, each time I went to pick up the items. And even on occasions that I met him, he would come up with all kinds of ‘kweku ananse’ stories. This continued for some time and when I realized he wanted to put my education in jeopardy with his damn foolish lies, I had no other option than to report him to the Peoples’ Defense Committee.
A member at the office was made to accompany me to the man’s shop where he was invited and made to refund every pesewa my mother had deposited in lieu of those items, on that very same day. I was barely 12years old and I felt so damn good on that day since there was absolutely no way a little boy could have gotten that swift form of justice in a traditional court in those days and the prospect of my future education would have been thrown into doubt by that wicked Mankessim shop owner.
Again, in 1986, I saw an advert in the Daily Graphic newspaper inviting applications from people to be trained in Medical Laboratory and Radiological Technology at the Korle-Bu Teaching hospital. I applied, and within a matter of just one week, I received a reply from Ministry of Health inviting me for interview at the Department of Radiology. I was successful at the interview and I underwent the 3year course of study with incentives as free housing, utilities and monthly allowances.
I completed the course and served my mandatory National Service. And even during my first posting to Tema General Hospital, a top official of then PNDC government wanted to offer me a scholarship to pursue medicine in Cuba but I turned down the offer and rather left the shores of Ghana for Geneva (Switzerland) because I’m a capitalist oriented person and therefore had no reason to undergo socialist form of indoctrination.
Now, the era of PNDC, undoubtedly, was replete with great excesses but I decided to tell this personal story so people will know that, in the midst of that gargantuan dark cloud which hanged over the nation at the time, some other ills of society were also corrected.
Rawlings’ parable-laden pronouncements
This therefore gives Rawlings, who presided over that period spanning nearly two decades, has naturally gathered a wealth of experience, no other person currently alive in Ghana, has an idea of, in the area of Ghana’s political evolution. The man isn’t fluent in any of Ghana’s local languages but his many years of being at the helm of affairs has made him so analytically shrewd and politically savvy to the point where he often speaks in parables, instead of normal day-to-day language that any ordinary person can easily comprehend.
And rather ironically, it is the very followers of his vision and beliefs who have become unfortunate victims of Rawlings’ shrewd political statements. When the man speaks, it takes an analytical mind to decipher what he says, in which context he makes a particular statement and the intended target. But rather sadly, this analytic minds is completely absent in the whole of NDC party today. As a matter of fact, this evidence of NDC lacking analytic minds was clearly demonstrated at their recent congress in Kumasi where they shouted for joy, blew gargantuan vuvuzelas in unprecedented ecstasy and leaped with excitement like male squirrels on heat, when Rawlings described them as lacking integrity and engaging in gargantuan acts of unprecedented corruption.
Under normal circumstance, such a damning condemnation from their party founder should have solicited down-cast faces and deep moments of introspection, if these greedy bastards really had their thinking-cups on. But, while their illiterate followers jubilated over Rawlings’ indictment on NDC party hierarchy, their leaders who were in the line of Rawlings’ fire were also on radio stations unconsciously claiming Rawlings had showered praise on them, and that, it was a good sign that he was ready to join the party’s electioneering campaign.
Rawlings tells voltarians to reject NDC
Then again,Rawlings goes to meet chiefs of his home region,volta,where he admonished his people not to vote for NDC out of fear for NPP,but rather vote out the NDC because they have failed to deal with corruption, and that, the level of corruption in the current NDC administration is “very deep”. Rawlings further said that "the NDC in power should be based on the conviction that it has the capacity to fight corruption and injustice but not out of fear for the New Patriotic Party” (GNA.19/9/12).
This statement by Rawlings simply proves the point that the current NDC government has no capacity to either fight corruption or injustice and must be rejected at the polls in December 7th; and instead of these greedy bastards weeping over such a damning critique, they are rather jubilating and claiming it is an endorsement of John Mahatma, just because they lack understanding of words of wisdom.
Again at that meeting with Volta Regional chiefs,Rawlings said "you(NDC) haven't been able to deal with corruption in the first year, the second year, the third year and the fourth year.So,what is the guarantee that this canker will be dealt with, when NDC is given a second term”. Now, if this is what these NDC propaganda fools are describing as an endorsement of John Mahama, then I don’t really see why they should rather be the ones to be fighting against Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s concept of free SHS education. And my reason is this; NDC, by nature, is a party that delights in having all their party supporters being stark illiterates, while children of the party’s top-guns are being given first-class education in Britain and America!!!
And to enable them win the confidence of these illiterate party bigots and get their votes so this infinitesimal clique of gluttonous party hierarchy can continue looting state coffers, they have institutionalized the concept of senseless lying by creating a propaganda outfit and inextricably integrating it into their party machine. Office holders of this propaganda positions have proven to be damn empty heads whose only claim to fame is churning out of highly offensive verbal flatulence with no substance.
This has made grass-root supporters of NDC believe that acquiring knowledge for one’s self advancement is evil.However,it is my belief that the good people of Ghana will make Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo the next president by massively voting for him on December 7th,so he can actualize his noble concept of free SHS which these NDC illiterate followers are so desperately in need of, so that the scales on their eyes will come off to enable them appreciate the extent of naked abuse their thieving party hierarchy has been subjecting them to, for all these years!!!
Justice Abeeku Newton-Offei
E-mail: justnoff@yahoo.com