General News of Monday, 6 June 2016

Source: Daily Guide

Turn the heat on Mahama - FONKAR begs Jerry Rawlings

Former President, Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings Former President, Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings

Members of Friends of Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings (FONKAR) have passionately appealed to former President Jerry John Rawlings to cease his vitriolic attacks on the late President John Evans Atta Mills.

The FONKAR members urged Rawlings to rather turn the heat on President John Dramani Mahama for allegedly worsening the country’s economic conditions, which had resulted in untold hardships, suffering and unbearable cost of living.

According to the FONKAR members, the activists of the group in the Western and Central Regions were not enthused about the incessant spiteful attacks by the former president on late President Mills. “We cannot fathom why President Rawlings keeps chastising and saying all sorts of things against the late Mills even after his death,” they stated.

“We are also surprised at the seeming quietness of former President Rawlings on the corrupt practices that the people of Ghana are witnessing under this NDC administration,” they added.

Addressing a press conference in Sekondi-Takoradi, the National Coordinator of FONKAR, Joseph Badiako, noted that the economy of Ghana under the Mills administration was far better than that of the current Mahama-led administration.

“So we don’t understand why Mr. Rawlings keeps on bashing the late President Mills. Hasn’t Mr. Rawlings seen anything wrong with the Mahama administration?

“We are appealing to former President Rawlings to divert all his energies to Mahama and allow late President Mills rest in peace,” he said. He continued: “Hasn’t President Rawlings read or heard about the AMERI deal, Smarttys bus branding, and other inflated contract figures as well as the profligate spending by the office of the presidency?”

He noted that the NDC government’s stock-in-trade had been to tax almost everything in Ghana, borrow every pesewa on the international market, issue bonds almost every quarter and over-bill ECG consumers, yet the economy was still in shambles.

NDC Green Book

He also told journalists that the over 200-page green book of the NDC was filled with several artistic impressions, non-existing projects and a few projects at inflated costs.

“Several political and civil society groupings as well as ordinary Ghanaians have raised questions and challenged the credibility of those projects captured in the book but the NDC has failed to respond appropriately,” he noted, adding, “We FONKAR members are challenging the NDC to publish the green book and its contents in the national dailies to enable the public do proper scrutiny of their so-called achievements. It’s obvious and signs are clear that the NDC government will fall like the walls of Jericho come November 7 or December 7.”

Present at the press conference were Richard Bekoe and Kwesi Denkyi, General Secretary and Special Advisor of FONKAR respectively.