A defiant Flt. Lt. J.J. Rawlings stoked the embers of his famous Kumasi positive defiance speech in an interview, which in itself has generated more controversy among the more hostile Ghanaian community in London brimming with political refugees and victims of his regime’s excesses.

Radio XFS, one of the five Ghanaian-interest private FM stations, scored what it described as a scoop over the local competition by securing the long interview with the former president in which questions that have been agitating the minds of Ghanaians at home and abroad were partially dealt with. Some of the questions were hard, controversial and sometimes aggressive, but a good number of the callers took issues with the hosts for blocking out phone-ins that offered opportunities for public grilling.

“The interviewers Mr. Badu alias Rabbi and Sefa, formerly a TV3 reporter in Koforidua and now a student at Middlesex University’s Journalism school, told Chronicle that they were being inundated with furious callers but they thought they had to treat the former president with decorum so that he will feel comfortable when the need arose for them to interview him again”.

On the issue of his pronouncements in Aboabo, Kumasi that culminated in a visit to the BNI for interrogation, ex-president Rawlings explained that he had been preaching that message of positive defiance for 10 to 15 years, it was nothing new and he was not about to stop preaching that message.

Expatiating on that doctrine, the former president first corrected the impression that he said that he did not believe in the ballot box. Rather, he said, he remains convinced that multi-party democracy is not necessarily the solution to our political problems.

He is a firm believer in the right of the people to make choices, “a right we must revere”. “I do not believe in multi-party democracy in Africa and I am still saying it,” he stressed echoing views that are consistent with Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni’s, “We do not nurture it”.

Rawlings said Ghanaians wanted multi-party democracy and so he simply went along with them. (a referendum in 1991 under his chairmanship of the PNDC government).

In a persuasive rationisation, he continued, “My personal feelings did not count in that respect. The concept of democracy does not start and finish with an election. It is a daily practice, and it should be practiced everyday.” He said unfortunately, in other parts of the world, some people think they are tin gods.

He dismissed Rabbi’s rather pungent question about a desire to return to rule Ghana at all costs, saying that he has never had the ambition to be president and it would be unfair for Rabbi to ask him what he saw as an unfair question on reputed abhorrence for democracy and a consuming ambition to he head of state again. “There is something more satisfying than being a president. The passion to see that justice is done. I will never be a Pontius Pilate to wash my hands off Christ or the Truth. I will always fight against injustice,” Rawlings was quoted in the Ghanaian Chronicle as saying.

The former-president reminded his audience that these were the injustices (NPP government’s injustices) that led to the coups and revolt of ’79 and claimed the lives of some of our generals who paid the price for the sins of the country and the politicians.

He asked a rhetorical question, “How do we stop it? We should not wait till some civic disobedience or coup. We should stand up whether it is an NPP government or an NDC government”.

Rawlings turning ecclesiastical said, the Koran, the Bible and the Constitution of Ghana all speak against injustice. “You don’t need to be a president before you fight against injustice”.

“Continuing, the controversial former Flt. Lt. charged the Kufuor government for unfair and vindictive dismissal of workers in the ministries and food-dragging in checking his men for corruption.

This government is currently committing too many crimes. Let us not wait till the next elections of 2004 before we get up and boot them out, but we must stand up and speak against them. That is what I said and meant. We should learn to say no to what is wrong. I said the same thing not too long ago at our congress. We should not allow ourselves to be led like sheep into doing the wrong things. That is what I said and they took it and misconstrued it and lied about it”.