But for the swift intervention of party bigwigs who shepherded President Atta Mills out of the National Executive Committee meeting of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) last Friday, he would have had a man-to-man clash with political mentor and former president, Jerry Rawlings, information reaching Daily Guide indicates.

Reports say it was the NDC General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketia and National Security Coordinator, Larry Gbevlo-Lartey who sprang to their feet, and hurriedly ushered the President out of the meeting to prevent a looming clash, when agitated Mills shouted, ‘I will respond; I will respond’ to a barrage of criticisms highlighted by Mr. Rawlings.

The President was said to have been driven mad by wild accusations fired at him by Jerry Rawlings during the meeting while he, Mills, was denied an opportunity to respond or clear his name.

Rawlings was said to have gone haywire with his allegations until Atta Mills, almost moved to tears, interrupted and started to yell atop his frail feminine voice, “I have to respond, I have to respond, it is not fair, it is not fair, I have to respond.”

Reports say he was however not given the chance and Rawlings was allowed to go on with his lengthy lectures on “what Mills’s Ministers are doing to dirty the moral fibre of the society.”

After Rawlings’s heart-piercing speech, the President was reported to have once protested and demanded a right to respond: “It is not fair… I must react… I will react… it is not fair.” A source at the meeting said persons present tried in vain to get the President to hold on with his reaction until Rawlings made his point but he kept interrupting. “So when Rawlings finally finished speaking, we all saw there was tension and if Mills was allowed to speak it would have resulted in something else.

So Gbevlo went to him immediately and then the General Secretary also joined and they walked him out. He himself was already angry and wanted to leave,” the highly-placed source told Daily Guide.

He was whisked away so swiftly that photographers could not even get a snapshot of him at the highly charged meeting which discussed the impending party primaries slated for July 8 to 10 in Sunyani.

Mills was followed by other key and influential members of government and the NDC including top cabinet Ministers like Dr Kwabena Duffuor, Finance Minister.

Head of Communications at the Presidency, Koku Anyidohu did not pick his phone when Daily Guide tried reaching him over the matter. An sms text message that was sent to his phone to explain why DAILY GUIDE wanted to speak to him also received no reply.

Meanwhile, it has been gathered that Mr Rawlings, at the NEC meeting, was accusing the President of having Ministers and government officials who instead of concentrating on government business, were criss-crossing the length and breadth of the country on a subtle but strategic campaign for an ‘Atta Mills 2012 Candidature’ with money suspected to belong to the tax payer.

“One of the things Rawlings raised was that if Mills had Ministers who knew their job, they would have helped to find out which University students took the law into their own hands and stripped naked a suspected female thief, beat her up while they videoed it and later circulated it to the public.

“He said it was only a lazy government that would not open fresh investigations into the Ya Na death but go in for the old evidence that could not jail the suspects and used that same evidence in a fresh trial; but Mills thought otherwise and wanted to respond,” the source noted.

On the matter of the President’s loyalists embarking on a campaign for an ‘Atta Mills 2012’, Daily Guide gathered as at press time yesterday that a particular Special Aide at the Castle who wants to contest the Odododiodoo parliamentary seat was in Kumasi meeting with a group of NDC serial callers and allegedly sharing money to them.

Though not confirmed beyond doubt, one of the said NDC serial callers told Daily Guide that the Special Aide met with them at the Regional Co-ordinating Council in Kumasi and that they were coached on how to make Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings unpopular.

Daily Guide gathered that similar meetings had also gone on in Accra and other regions and that from today Monday April 11, there would be several persons phoning into radio and TV discussions to badmouth and run down the former First Lady and declare her unfit to win the Presidency for the NDC come 2012.