Rawlings exposes himself and damns his legacy (Part II)
By Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor
Saturday, May 28, 2016

Folks, we now turn attention to the peculiar issues reflecting the lost cause that Rawlings and his wife and whatever accentuates their sun-down cause. We are convinced that the Rawlingses have cast the first stone at themselves and are a lost cause in the current Ghanaian political dispensation. We laugh them to scorn, doing so with no regrets and hoping that we will be vindicated by posterity.
Now that the dust has settled, we are convinced of our perspectives regarding the Rawlingses’ political ambitions, which endangers Ghana’s democracy, especially if we consider how the Rawlingses registered their ambitions on the political scene. Jerry Rawlings’ morbid desire for political power and autocratic rule, which was underscored by his almost 20 years’ stranglehold on Ghanaian politics, is revealed by himself in his own words:

“We are worst today than we were before. You know we did our bit from the 80’s. In 1979, we had no choice; people were angry and it was a time of rage. We had to handover but then we had to come back again in 81 or 82. We could have stayed on for another eight or sixteen just to work to consolidate situations very well and proper.

“And I made a suggestion to my colleagues that considering that people are becoming saturated with us or with me, let me let Justice Annan takeover and I can be his number 2 or step aside. He can serve four years or eight years then I could come back; and that will be sixteen years of consolidation because what we had noticed was that his characters will destroy anything and everything so let’s not allow it.”

He continued, “Some of my comrades said no and that it’s never been done before. Is that not what Putin did recently? We would have been the first to do it here. That would have helped to consolidate because quite often we make reference to institutions but the institutions rely on the human factor and if those human entities are not bold enough to defy that which is wrong, that institution will be weak; am I lying?” he asked.

He said a lot more to damn the Nkrumahist front that betrays his own political immaturity and calculated mischief. “Can you believe that those of us, we don’t even regard ourselves as Nkrumahists. Those who call themselves Nkrumahists are the worst offenders; criminals. From Mills till now, not even one single policy resembles anything Nkrumah stood for or believed in”, he said. (See http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Ghana-is-worst-today-some-intellectuals-are-dumb-Rawlings-441668).

So, Rawlings is embittered that he wasn’t allowed to extend his rule beyond the mandatory tenure provided for by the 1992 Constitution? And he is blaming his own NDC camp for stalling it all, which is why he is doing all he can to destroy the NDC? How paradoxical can’t it all be?

In any case, Rawlings couldn’t have sprung his kind of surprise on Ghanaians without being snuffed out. The forces arrayed against him at the time he bowed to pressure to usher Ghana into this democratic era were too indomitable. Let him not spin any yarn here. At least, those of us close to the system knew it all. I wish Justice D.F. Annan were alive to remove the specks from Rawlings’ eyes!!

To some of his admirers, he is to be respected for pursuing the national development agenda begun by the Great Osagyefo in terms of the development projects aimed at boosting Ghana’s surge into prominence and providing facilities to improve living standards. Talk about his government’s heavy investment in road infrastructure, rural electrification, grassroots participation in politics, national and patriotic posturing, and many other projects that stood him out as a fond replica of the Great Osagyefo.
Pronto, folks!! Has Rawlings not given us the mirror-image to see him as a power-drunk upstart benefiting from the cowardice of Ghanaians?

Alert Rawlings watchers know the history behind his rise to power and why he is still itching to be in control of affairs, even though defeated by the Fates. Reliable information has it that Rawlings began contemplating his rise to power when the late Kutu Acheampong toppled the effeminate Busia administration. He nursed hopes of being a strongman to have Ghana do his bidding, which culminated in the May 15 abortive coup d’état but would eventually be providentially salvaged by the June Four Uprising that he had no hand in. At the time, he was languishing in the secured cells of the Special Branch, awaiting his sad fate (a sure death by firing squad at the end of his trial by the late Col. Enningful’s tribunal).

Monday, June 4, 1979, was the date for the passing of that judgement and his subsequent execution not long thereafter. But as his Fate would have it, hell broke loose and the Boakye-Gyan elements seeing eye-to-eye with him freed him from the jaws of death, spiralling him into stardom. This emancipation would make him the hero of those for whom “the blood must flow”. And the blood did flow only to set the stage for what has continued to dog him as the most controversial Ghanaian leader on whose hand the blood of many lies. No need for elaboration.

The almost 20 years of the Rawlings’ stranglehold on Ghanaian politics and the trauma that it has perpetuated—that is difficult to untangle—remains a national problem. But Nature will definitely have its own course. History has a rich record of how such enigmas have been resolved. In most cases, it has always ended in painful agony for the perpetrators. If Hell has room for them, it is a fait accompli that they should be prepared to face.

Let me complicate issues here to say that Rawlings’ 19-year rule succeeded and was to be circumscribed within a never-ending self-delusional spiral in the period ushering different political perspectives. Do we not know now why his wife would use the 31st December Women’s Movement (that she didn’t form, anyway) to propel herself into contention and later manipulate hirelings to form the Friends of Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings (FONKKAR) and the National Democratic Party (NDP) to propel toward causing confusion at Elections 2012 and 2016? And why Rawlings himself is now emaciated as to lose traction? Interestingly, Nature is waiting for it all.

Ghana doesn’t now need Rawlings’ kind of “Kwaku Ananse” politics. He has been consigned to the back woods but is not intelligent enough to know that fact. He is chafing, dragging his wife in tow, as if doing so will return him to the limelight. Now that he has succumbed to his wife’s pressure to embrace their arch nemesis in the guise of the NPP and its Akufo-Addo, they are speedily eating their own eggs. Unfortunately, doing so means denying themselves the means of sustenance. How to survive thereafter will be their biggest worry. History has a huge archive of their kind. No more!!

I shall return…
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