General News of Thursday, 22 April 2021

Source: www.ghanaweb.com

In his later years, JJ made threats about divided NDC cadres front – Kunbuor

The former president worried about divisions in the cadre front The former president worried about divisions in the cadre front

Former Health and Defence Minister, Benjamin Kunbuor, has revealed some of the pressing issues of concern that the late former president Jerry John Rawlings harboured in his latter years.

According to Kunbuor, who identifies himself as a senior cadre, Rawlings had invited him and other leading members to his house and complained about the divided front of the National Democratic Congress’ cadres.

Speaking on Citi TV’s Face To Face program on Tuesday evening, GhanaWeb monitored his comments which also included that Rawlings had at a point threatened to block out any splinter group from meeting with him.

Kunbuor is however convinced that splinters are largely concentrated in the capital: “The cadres have started splintering into the United Cadres front, Umbrella Cadres Front etc. most of it an Accra phenomenon. You don’t see that in the regions.

“Before Jerry Rawlings died, he had invited a number of us including Dan Abodakpi that, look, put these cadres together, I am not comfortable with these splinter groups.

“Otherwise I am not going to deal with any of them. We had been working at that for almost a year and a half before he went,” he told show host Umaru Sanda Amadu.

A recent meeting by a cadre group in Tema has been criticized by a section of the party’s leadership given the critical outcomes of the said meeting.

Kunbuor, an NDC Council of Elders, who was at the meeting stressed that the Tema meeting afforded him and Dan Abodakpi the opportunity to meet faction leaders, stressing that Abodakpi had at the gathering emphasized the need for all members to put the unity of the party above all else.