Opinions of Tuesday, 14 January 2014

Columnist: Dwamena, Frederick

Akufo-Addo Must Call Rawlings To Order

We have noted with a very deep sense of misgiving the unprovoked and unfounded attacks being made on the integrity of our cherished former President Kufour by the NDC's Mr. Rawlings.

Upon a careful study of Mr. Rawlings' recent attacks on former President Kufour, we have come to the conclusion that the attacks are coming at this time purposely to diminish President Kufour's stature and influence within the NPP in the run-up to our internal contest which would culminate in the election of a flagbearer for the 2016 election.

Having taken notice of the well publicised newly developed friendship between Mr. Rawlings and Nana Akufo-Addo, we have no doubt that Mr. Rawlings' attacks on former President Kufour is deliberately calculated to enhance the chances of Akufo-Addo in the internal elections. While we have no empirical evidence to suggest that Mr. Rawlings is doing the bidding of Nana Akufo-Addo, we have no doubt that Nana Akufo-Addo has a moral responsibility to call his friend to order.

We recall that in the run-up to the 2012 elections, Nana Akufo-Addo led a powerful delegation of NPP stalwarts to visit Mr. Rawlings at his Ridge residence. At the said meeting, Nana profusely extolled Rawlings' anti-corruption virtues and stated that he (Nana) draws inspiration from Rawlings and that he admires Rawlings' method of fighting corruption.

It is our considered opinion that Mr. Rawlings' unprovoked and unfounded attacks on former President Kufour cannot be something that Akufo-Addo can say is inspirational. It is in this light that we call on Akufo-Addo to publicly call his new-found friend to order unless he wants the rest of us to believe that he approves of Mr. Rawlings' attacks and find the attacks inspirational.

We patiently await Nana Akufo-Addo's public condemnation of his friend's attacks on former President Kufour.

Signed

Frederick Dwamena

Nana Osei Anto

Jay Ahobrase

PS:

By way of a brief introduction, the undersigned are all card-holding members of the NPP who hold the view that President Kufuor represents the face of the UP/NPP tradition in view of the fact that he has been the most successful leader, politically, of the tradition to date. Thus, any attack on President Kufuor cannot be his personal concern, but a UP/NPP matter. It is in view of this strongly-held view of ours that we issue the above release.