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Opinions of Friday, 12 October 2012

Columnist: Osabutey, Kingsley

RE: Rawlings Is Guilty Of ‘Double Allegiance’

As is typical of African intellectuals, the lecturer from KNUST, in his article on the above topic, only managed to complicate and obfuscate a simple matter. The bottom line about this NDP – NDC imbroglio is that it is a game for the scramble of power. The elements of this jumble are simple to decode.

Rawlings is a public figure – a former President of Ghana and the 'founder' of the NDC. He has long ago finished serving two terms of presidency but apparently, he still eagerly yearns for the trappings of power and the adulation that goes with it. He cannot seem to be able to rid himself of that itching nostalgia to come back for more.

Furthermore, considering the violent and undemocratic circumstances that surround Rawlings entry into government and the long controversial stint as head of state, he has, as did Afrifa and all other coup-makers, a pathologically excessive fear for his personal security, safety and anything that might disturb his continued existence on this earth. He needs not just the presence of a few policemen around him at all times but the greater security of a powerful fawning govt to assure him of a comfortable life and sleep.

Now, fortunately or unfortunately, his wife, for whatever reasons which on face value are unknown to us all, but probably best known to the two of them alone, has founded another political Party which for all it is worth - at best, poses a threat to the electoral fortunes of the NDC, a party of which her husband is the founder and currently, the Chairperson of its Council of Elders(?).

We all also know that Rawlings has had serious problems with the NDC in recent times to the extent that he has labelled leading members of the NDC Party - including the former President as hopelessly inept and corrupt. He has several times openly asserted - on that basis that, the NDC will not win the December 2012 elections amongst other strong criticism and condemnations.

We all also know that his wife - with his (Rawlings) support, made a vain attempt to wrestle the leadership of the Party from former President Mills in a recent NDC National Congress but failed miserably. Now she the wife, who lives in the same house with Rawlings has, a few months down the line, now founded another Party. Those who live in cloud-cuckoo-land, not surprisingly, like to believe that Rawlings will not support his wife - morally, financially, materially and spiritually in the pursuits of the wife’s National Democratic Party, which suspiciously, sports virtually the same colours as the NDC. I find it difficult to grasp the logic with which any one can even remotely arrive at this unconvincing conclusion.

Some of us who do not live in cloud-cuckoo-land, know that Rawlings is merely a narcissistic opportunist. He only sees and understands what is good for him only, what makes sense to him only, and proceeds to take advantage of others like those who prefer to continue living in cloud-cuckoo-land, to get what he wants. It is this very characteristic weakness of Rawlings and some of those citizens of cloud-cuckoo-land around him, that paradoxically projected him to power in ’79 and which has offered him a significant level of credibility in the public domain.

Rawlings is clearly not an intelligent person but he is a low-down-dirty schemer – a master of the divide and rule tactic when it comes to achieving his motives. This mischievous trait he obviously inherited from the genes of his unknown white parentage. It is therefore not very likely that Rawlings will abandon his wife’s Party the NDP but, if on the other hand the NDC does not kow-tow to his wiles and demands, he can publicly denounce the NDC with a ‘boom’ on the convenient platform of the NDP at the last minute before the elections. This he will do only with the aim of breaking up the massive ranks of foot-soldiers and Rawlings goons in the NDC to cause sufficient disaffection to make the NDC lose the elections so that he can triumphantly wade into the fray and reclaim ‘his Party’ – the NDC .

As for the NDP, it more gradually seems to have been formed only as a pawn to checkmate the now increasingly ‘liberated’ NDC if the latter does not conform to the wishes of the Rawlings family to ‘play ball’. It is the big stick that hangs over the head of the NDC if ‘they do not behave themselves’. On that premise, it may appear that the NDP is not really a serious political Party with the intention to capture political power. Very likely it is a Party that has been formed to brow-beat the NDC to keep in line with the ‘Rawlings tradition’. To buttress that point, one is prompted to ask why any meaningful or sincere political Party would entertain such thoroughly discredited characters like Josiah Aryeh and his convoy of political nonentities within the leadership of its ranks?

From this perspective it would seem that the NDP is a dispensable - or better still, a disposable political Party that has primarily been established by Mr & Mrs Rawlings with the sole aim of arm-twisting the NDC to accommodate the uncompromising Rawlings factor. Nothing more, nothing less! It is also possible that so long as the NDC does not bend to the whims and caprices of Mr & Mrs Rawlings, the NDP will continue to irritate and further entrench its curious posture to harass the NDC into a state of vulnerable oblivion.

As for the convoluting hogwash from our brother from the KNUST, the less said about it the better. No meaningful African or Ghanaian nationalist would venture to solicit or imbibe the weird political opinions of some of those our less fortunate brothers in academia. Their minds have been so thoroughly and effectively warped (not wapped) by the sadistic tool of imperialist (mis)education that, they have crash-landed into a state of abject disorientation in the public domain.