Feature Ghana
As long expected, Mrs Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings has finally launched her campaign to challenge President John Atta Mills for the NDC 2012 presidential nomination. Looking at the enor- mous odds stacked against her, why has she put her hat into the ring? Is it merely spoiling tactics – to deprive the sitting president of a second term, paving the way for a soft victory for the opposition NPP in 2012, so the NDC can go back to the drawing board in opposition, where the Rawlingses can then regain their influence on the party, and prepare Mrs Rawlings for the 2016 campaign? From Accra, Osei Boateng looks at all the permutations.
What is the Rawlingses’ real agenda?
N
OBODY GOES INTO A VENTURE like the one Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings (and by extension, her husband, former President Jerry John Rawlings)
has embarked upon without calculating the risks, gains and losses. Looking at the political history of the Rawlingses them- selves (during the 18 years that they were in power) and all the things that happened during those harrowing years, which are so fresh in the minds of voters – plus the fact that Ghana does not have a history of a political dynasty that transfers power from husband to wife – the odds against Mrs Rawlings winning national power in 2012 even if she beats President John Atta
46 | June 2011 New African
Mills in the primaries fixed for Sunyani (8-10 July), are very high! So why has she decided to go through
these high hoops if she doesn’t have a dog’s chance of winning national power in 2012 or even 2016? Is it, as some analysts have said, merely spoiling tactics to deprive President Mills of a second term? Or is it just an attempt to hand victory on a sil- ver plate to the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) in 2012 so the ruling Na- tional Democratic Congress (NDC) can be radically restructured in opposition to give control back to the Rawlingses and prepare Mrs Rawlings for the 2016 elec- tions? What is their real agenda? Only one person has come close to un-
ravelling what is going through the heads of the Rawlingses. Teir former friend and matchmaker, Osahene Boakye Djan, the man who led the June 4 Uprising in 1979 that sprang Rawlings from detention and saved him from a possible execution at the hands of Gen F.W.K. Akuffo’s military government, gave a major interview to the US-based Africawatch magazine in August last year, and his prediction about what the Rawlings were likely to do in 2011 has come tantalisingly true. Djan, famous when it comes to politi-
cal forecasting, told the nation: “Tere are going to be spoiling tactics in the NDC in the run-up to the 2012 election, which will allow Akufo-Addo a free run to victory.”
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