“I told him that assuming I should even help you, how can I help you when you’ve dismembered the rest of my body and you’ve left only the head.” – JJ RAWLINGS

The founder of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and former President Jerry John Rawlings seems to be standing at a cross-roads as to whether or not to campaign for incumbent President Mills and the NDC ahead of the December 2012 general elections.

Addressing party supporters at the National Theatre in Accra recently as part of the 30th anniversary celebration of the 31st December Revolution, Rawlings disclosed that the National Security Advisor, Brigadier General Nunoo-Mensah (Rtd), a man he described as his good friend, had met him to discuss the way forward for the NDC as this year’s presidential elections approached.

The General, he said, wanted them to map out a strategy for the party to win the 2012 general elections.

But the founder of the NDC said he did not buy into the idea.

He said he told the Brigadier: “When you’ve dismembered and destroyed so much some of the committed die-hard people within the party machinery that we can count on; when you destroy that…they are part of me as I am a part of them. If you destroy that which is Rawlings’ head, of what use is this head going to be to you without the body; the structure of the party, the committed people on the ground? You think I operate alone?”

His comments attracted intermittent applause from the crowd who urged him on to say it all.

Mr Rawlings said he and his wife Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings had a single vote each and for that matter, the leadership of the party should rather concentrate their efforts on how to convince disillusioned foot-soldiers who had been trooping to his house with various concerns about government’s neglect of grass-root members of the party.

He recalled how leadership of the party locked out party foot-soldiers at its congress in Tamale, thereby preventing access to the venue for the congress.

Meanwhile, he said arrangements had been made for people he referred to as hooligans to misbehave against some of the delegates who were vying for positions.

Mr Rawlings indicated he did not believe the leadership of NDC had since learnt any lessons because, “when it came to another congress in a stadium in Sunyani, we repeated the same foolishness”, receiving a thunderous applause from the huge crowd that had gathered at the National Theatre to listen to him.

He also lamented that both President Mills and Vice President John Dramani Mahama had failed to travel to Akwatia to help the party’s Parliamentary Candidate to win the by-elections in the area, saying, “I don’t know where the President was, whether he had travelled; but nobody was there to campaign for our candidate. The Vice President was sitting in Accra saying that the security report from that place said so and so and so, so it’s like he cannot go.”

He recounted his personal commitment and contribution to the campaign which saw the NDC returning to power during the 2008 general elections at a time when he said the leadership of the party seemed to have lost hope.

At the time, Mr Rawlings said he was the one who encouraged the leadership to organise a rally at Kasoa to defy what he described as the psychological intimidation employed by the then ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP).

According to him, even then “the President and the Vice President and other leaders did not turn up at Kasoa because I think that they were afraid that we will not be able to marshal people as huge as that.”

He then shot a question to his audience: “If you are avoiding that place, who should go and risk campaigning for you on the ground?”

An obviously disappointed Mr Rawlings said “some of the little request I have been making, justified…to do with the life of humanity, things that needed to be investigated. Even if you were to say today that he (Mills) is going to investigate this…nobody will take him serious.”

This, he said, was because it would look opportunistic and that “the only time they (referring to President Mills and members of his administration) will be taken serious is to cleanse the house; to clean up and bring back the dedicated committed ones.”

Otherwise, “I just don’t see what chance they stand” since “people are suffering”, Mr Rawlings said.