Konadu On Mission To Destroy JJ? - NDC Members Ask

Supporters of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) are questioning former first lady Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings’ motives for some of her recent pronouncements that seek not only to bring the name of former President Jerry John Rawlings into public disrepute and odium but to eventually obliterate his legacy.

They alleged that Nana Konadu’s recent media commentaries after Mr Rawlings appealed to her to come back to the NDC seem to have been tailored to ridicule the former air force pilot and finally wipe out his good legacy.

According to them the attitude of the failed National Democratic Party (NDP) 2012 presidential candidate proves she is hell bent on doing anything humanly possible including destroying the life achievements of her better half of 38 years even if that would enable her realize her overly ambitious political pursuit.

In varying facebook and twitter comments soon after Nana Konadu revealed in a media interview that her parents provided the educational needs for her four children and not Mr Rawlings, NDC supporters, particularly those from Mr Rawlings native region, Volta, took a swipe at the former first lady, reading all kinds of meanings into it.

In a series of well-calculated media offensive since the call publicly by her husband to return to the NDC at the party’s Kumasi congress, Nana Konadu has never missed the opportunity to embarrass and or, deride the former president, Jerry John Rawlings.

It began with her outright rejection of her husband’s call for her to return to her ‘natural’ home, the NDC. Then, as if wooing sympathy on the husband’s behalf when, in reality, she is only courting public opprobrium and disdain for the longest serving head of state of Ghana.

Nana Konadu, to the bewilderment of many Ghanaians told the world that, her husband and former head of two military juntas AFRC and PNDC, Jerry John Rawlings has never been on salary as head of state.

While some could not fathom what the NDC founder may have done to hurt his wife to the extent of her embarking on this reckless mission, others attribute Mrs Rawlings sudden indirect public jabbing of her hubby to his recent reconciliation with the party he founded. One of them (name withheld) wrote on his facebook wall “It is time we the Anlo’s rise up and protect the legacies of one of our own. We cannot sit down aloof and allow an individual who thinks she must be president regardless of the consequences to destroy what he has toiled over the years to build…she nearly destroyed Rawlings when she hoodwinked him to support her bid and berated late president Mills and other leading members of the NDC. We must not allow her to have her way this time round.”

Another known Rawlings critic on facebook wrote “People are saying that the way Nana Konadu is talking, she will soon tell us that Jerry is not the father of her children…Madame please stop talking.”

Nana Konadu, who abandoned the NDC to form the NDP after a sever flogging from late president Mills in 2011 flag bearer contest of the NDC in Sunyani, last week announced that Mr Rawlings did not pay his children school fees because he was not on salary during his term of office.

She revealed on ETV last week that “Even in office I wasn’t earning any income, I was lecturing outside and I was making some money but I put all the money into women empowerment programs because the government was not giving me one Cedi for what I was doing”. There was so much politicking about my husband giving me money, no he didn’t, I have told this story before. “He was not earning an income. No, he wasn’t taking it…I’m telling you.

Maybe you should call him here and ask him. Can I say who was helping me to take care of my [children]? My parents, my parents were helping me take care of my children,” an obsessive Konadu stated.

This revelation, which many said was deliberately calculated to belittle the NDC founder, follows a similar interview when Mrs Rawlings publicly told the husband in the face that she was not going to return to the NDC after Mr Rawlings had extended an olive branch to her.

These public pronouncements, according to some NDC supporters, do not augur well for the reputation of a revered personality like former President Jerry Rawlings, with one of them saying “Even if the former president did not pay his children’s school, was it right for Konadu to come and announce it to the whole world. To present Rawlings as an irresponsible father who did not see his children through school only smacks of calculated attempts by Konadu to turn Rawlings into a laughing stock among his peers.”