Konadu Boys Blast Ablakwa

Members of Friends of Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings (FONKAR) are angry over calls by a Deputy Information Minister, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, for them to render an apology to President Atta Mills for supposedly making derogatory remarks about him before the party�s recent Sunyani congress. Ablakwa said he did not understand why people, especially members of FONKAR who could easily pass for the President�s grandchildren would rain insults on him and make spurious allegations against his person and the government to the extent of describing him (Mills) as �blind and an infidel� during the campaign for Konadu. Prior to the congress, he said members of the group made statements to the effect that a vote for President Mills would be a loss for the NDC in 2012 since Mills had failed to deliver the numerous promises he made to Ghanaians and members of the NDC. But Communications Director of FONKAR Dela Coffie, yesterday told DAILY GUIDE that the Deputy Information Minister had no moral authority to ask members of the group to apologise to the President. For this reason, he said Ablakwa�s call must not be taken serious since �this same person Ablakwa was the one who started the whole thing of insulting people. �He was the very person who was insulting everybody including the founder. He made a comment in the studios of Radio Gold in early 2009 that government had paid $5million to President Rawlings and as a result President Rawlings must stop talking about foot-soldiers association and should go and give part of the money to the foot-soldiers.� Apart from that, he noted that Ablakwa and his other colleagues in the Get Atta Mills Endorsed (GAME) camp consistently attacked Mr and Mrs Rawlings in the run-up to the just-ended congress of the party. That notwithstanding, he noted, �He has no credibility to ask anybody in FONKAR to apologise for whatever we might have said so he should shut up. �If indeed issues were raised and people said things, it doesn�t lie in the mouth of Ablakwa to tell us to go and apologise. It lies in the mouth of the individual to come out and say that what I said in the past was based on this and as a result I want to retract and apologise. It doesn�t lie in the mouth of Ablakwa.� The Communications Director of FONKAR said the Mills camp did not seem to be ready for any unity talks, considering comments coming from people like Ablakwa who were part of the President�s campaign team. He noted that the onus now was on President Mills to initiate the process of unity and not the former First Lady or her husband, founder of the NDC, since it was part of his re-election campaign promise.