President Atta Mills has been accused of secretly sponsoring persons within the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to run down ex-President Jerry John Rawlings and his family.

The President has also been warned that if the attacks on the Rawlingses continued, it would soon unleash “legitimate violence” to protect the former first family and that no one should be blamed for the consequences and after effects.

The warning was contained in a news statement issued last night by a pro-Rawlings group calling itself Friends of Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings (FONKAR), in a swift response to comments from Alhaji Bature, another NDC activist, that Rawlings had been defeated and silenced.“We want to state categorically that President Mills and his close associates are behind this agenda to ridicule and discredit Mr. Rawlings…. We find Bature’s belligerence and his utterances on our party founder, to be very reckless and we are convinced that such unprovoked attack on the former president could only be part of that grand scheme orchestrated by President Mills to once again ridicule the former president,” FONKAR noted in the statement jointly signed by Dela Coffie and Ransford Cani-Amoah, the group’s Communications Director and founder respectively.

Alhaji Bature, in an interview with Adom Fm yesterday, noted among other things that “we have defeated him and we will take him on anytime he speaks”. But FONKAR has taken a very strong exception to the comments and described it as another threat against the former first family.“It was this same Bature who warned Mr. Rawlings of serious consequences if he does not stop criticizing President Mills and before we could say ‘Jack’, fire gutted the residence of the former President on the fateful day of February 14th 2010.

“We have therefore taken Bature’s folly as another threat on the Rawlingses and we will employ and deploy all legitimate violence to protect the former first family……… why is it acceptable for some Mills-loyalists to treat jerry Rawlings as a fugitive in his own Party?“We have been fooled to believe in a heaven on earth by promises of a better Ghana, meanwhile social misery undeniable remains the same if not worse; yet government is obsessed with the Rawlingses and bent on tearing them apart,” FONKAR noted in the statement.

The group noted that “even after several months of silence, Mr. Rawlings is being drawn into an unprovoked attack by the likes of Bature who have completely lost it. Bature is just one of the many wretched comedians among a bunch of noisy ducklings who have lost touch with reality and would sell their integrity to pretense in order to protect the status quo.

“No sane person who is clear in his or her mind will say that you have defeated Rawlings when indeed there was no battle. Bature’s comments have portrayed him as a loose talker who does not exercise discretion in the public domain,” it added.

FONKAR topped news charts when the group recently declared their support for former First Lady Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings as the 2012 presidential candidate for the NDC.