Opinions of Monday, 15 August 2016

Columnist: Sangaparee, Clement

Inside the trenches with Rawlings from Oct. 1979 to 31st Dec. 1981 - Final part

Former President John Rawlings Former President John Rawlings

The task of governing is so awesome and complicated that it cannot be a ONE MAN BUSINESS. No one can claim to do it all alone on this Cursed Earth. You have to get a team of honest Patriots.

Anytime I decide to write, I remind people that it is not just one personality elected as president no matter how good that person may be, because you need to know who are truly with you.

The Presidency is Not A THRONE YOU ASCEND as Rawlings had wanted his slender wife to replace Prez. Mills in 2011. It is the PEOPLES’ SEAT and you DO NOT GET TO IT BY BIRTH AS THE NPP AND THEIR FOREBEARS FALSELY BELIEVE SINCE 1951 TO DATE 2016.

You rather get to it BY CONVINCING THE PEOPLE THAT when they entrust you with the responsibility, you will deliver as President Mahama has been delivering since June 2012 to date 2016, so help him to continue with his good works on 7th Dec. 2016.

Anybody with the right to vote carries some of the power you will need, and you have to convince them and not intimidate or threaten them with death if they don't vote for you as the violent prone NPP leaders have been doing since 1992.

The majority would go out and vote massively for you to become President based on you’re the issues you raised about the national economy devoid of threats and intimidations and this explains why President Mahama was able to use only forty days to campaign and beat Nana Akuffo Addo in the 2012 general elections.

President Mahama could not even visit some of the Constituencies and Districts in Ghana, yet he beat the NPP in those areas hands down.

Using the experience of June 4

You should go out to talk to the people and try to convince them, should you not get it, don’t lose hope – just revisit your plans and work out your blue print well, and you will eventually succeed because after Rawlings handed over power to Dr. Limann and was been harassed and intimidated, we rallied behind him to remove Limann on 31st Dec. 1981.

It had not been easy at all because it was an extreme sacrifice for 2 1?2years. Today 2016, if you send a Party member to sacrifice and walk for Just 400 meters, he will stretch his hand to ask for his T&T – Why? It is because Ghana Politics Now Means Money Politics – Somebody Should Prove me wrong here.

Most politicians in Ghana are still in the business of deliberately preaching HATE, busily exploiting ETHNICITY, REGIONALISM AND RELIGEOUS GROUPS by using members of the AKAN NEWS CASTERS UNION (ANCU) a political wing of the NPP through their FM Radio Stations just to win political power in 2016 and we sit here and think that Ghana’s democratic credentials are

Intact

This falsehood and wrong perception of Ghana as a front runner state is not doing us any good since we are all playing the ostrich.

When such divisive politicians meet their Development Partners, they speak a different language, but when they are in public or on Radio, they sing a different tune when they meet their Party supporters in secret, they say all sorts of dangerous things including inciting them to attack their political opponents.

Events of the June Four Uprising has made the vast majority of the peasantry to stuck with the NDC making the party taking 8 out the 10 Regions in the country in 2008 and 2012 and it will be repeated in 2016.

A vexed question to ask however is this: How has the NPP eaten so deep into the working class areas despite the history of the 31st December Revolutionary process in 1982 which laid the path for the formation of the NDC in 1992? Exploring these points further, will assist the Progressive Forces to build a dynamising pillar and strategy that can pull along the majority of the people.

We have to organize actively and pains takingly at the grassroots and build units of a counter culture opposed to the establishment by the colonial authorities and inherited at independence. The Domestic Left has been very influential in all the changes in Ghana since the 1970’s but ended up not shifting Ghanaian Politics Leftwards but Rightwards and this should not be the case.

The visible exclusion of the points on which the Left fell out with J.J. Rawlings meant that those issues remained within the Forces who remained with Rawlings today 2016. The Left support base rejected the Old Establishment politicians who were overthrown through the 31st December 1981 Revolution and then the issues they identified was also not part of the Plartform.

They either decided not to be in any group or stay with the Devil they know. Revolutions are made because things are bad. If Ghana had all the money it wanted then there would be no need for ANY REVOLUTION at all. Rawlings departure from the Left was that he was very frustrated with the state of the economy in 1983. Keep your fingers crossed, I Shall Return.

Writer's e-mail: clementsang@yahoo.com