NDC To Woo Papa Jay On Dec. 31ST

The National Democratic Congress (NDC), a party that was born out of fraud, nurtured in falsehood, grew up soaked in blatant lies will live and die in evil and fraud. Ever since the NDC was born, it has used subterfuge, blackmail and outright intimidation as a means to shore up its membership. Anybody who does a backward search into the top membership of the party, during its formative years, would find out that many of the prominent people who were never part of the then outgoing PNDC were people �forcefully� dragged into the party for some obvious reasons. For example, the NDC had a number of former headmasters of secondary schools who until their appointments or involvement with the NDC, had been dismissed or interdicted for misappropriation of public funds. If Ghanaians would recall, in 1985, the government embarked on a massive auditing of all the Government Assisted Secondary Schools in the country. Many headmasters were found to have embezzled funds of their institutions. Court actions were began and aborted subsequently. Many of the affected were dismissed though. When the fourth Republican Constitution was about to be ushered into being and political parties were allowed to be formed, the NDC went about looking for prominent and credible people from various constituencies to join their party. Many of the prominent people they contacted in various regions and constituencies happened to be some of these ex-headmasters they themselves, under the PNDC, had dismissed and humiliated. In the Northern region for example, the late Alhaji A.B. Fuseini, one of the headmasters dismissed by the PNDC, was contacted to join the NDC from its inception and when the emissary went, the Alhaji was quoted to have said, �Allah kyeayi� meaning Allah forbid. The emissary left and reported the outcome of his efforts to those who sent him. They managed to pull an old file which implicated A.B. Fuseini in financial malpractices which could drag him to the law courts anytime. The man succumbed and became a parliamentary candidate for one of the Tamale seats and went to Parliament. He later on became an ambassador under the NDC2 administration. When the NDC lost power in 2000, he joined the NPP until his death. There were so many of such people in the NDC. Last weekend, on the sandy beaches of the popular Busua Beach Resort in my beloved Ahanta West District, the NDC met in a tough strategic meeting aimed at winning the 2012 elections. At the meeting, all the MMDCEs contributed GH�1,500 each towards the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the 31st December coup. Members of a high-powered committee to plan the 31st event are to be drawn from all over the country and they are to be financed by the regional ministers in their movement to and from the meetings to plan the celebration. Present at the Busua meeting were ubiquitous but now silent Kobby Acheampong of various infamy, Prof. Kwamena Ahwoi, master strategist of the NDC, Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, Solomon Nkansah, propagandist of no mean stature and many more. In fact, General Aseidu Nketia, the Mosquito gone AWOL in the public domain, was directing affaires and cooling it off at Busua. The Deputy Minister for the Western region, Emelia Arthur, was the obvious guest of honour (or is it maid of honour?). The NDC is embarking on one of what they know and do best, blackmail, intimidation or the use of money to influence or either coerce or persuade individuals or groups they have offended to get back to the party during election period. The NDC, in its bid to placate the man they have dismissed and denigrated as the founder of the party; the man Aseidu Nketia once said was not the owner of a one man church, the New Devine Church; the dog who has been tamed or caged so all manner of people can come into the household, is now planning a massive, grandiose and profligate 30th anniversary of the 31st December uprising and has put Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings at the centre stage as a means of calming him down in order to bring him back into the fold of the NDC for the purposes of the 2012 general elections. That is why Aseidu Nketia and others met last weekend at Busua Beach Resort. Aseidu Nketia has more important things to do than to answer to the ownership of a US$20 million party office. Governments and political parties meet in enclosed places every now and then for the purposes of strategizing and planning for one activity or the other. There is absolutely nothing wrong with such meetings, after all the NDC met elsewhere to take a decision on whether to accept the biometric verification or not and when an official of the Electoral Commission had briefed them on what they stood to lose should they accept the verification, electronically, Aseidu Nketia said emphatically that the government would not accept the electronic verification. However, for the NDC to plan to celebrate an occasion whose public celebration has been banned by law, just to please a man they have insulted publicly, a man on whose shoulders they can call themselves somebodies, a man who dragged Prof. Atta Mills from political obscurity to President, a man the NDC has used, misused, abused and thrown into the political garbage to be only part of history, they now want to use any means to solicit his �election machinery� for the purpose of winning elections just to dump him after that, tells the whole story about the party. The GH�1500.00 contributions by MMDCEs alone attracts over GH�300,000. The NDC sitting Members of Parliament and parliamentary candidates are all contributing towards this celebration � 30 years of a revolution which gave birth to the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC), which in its provisional nature, ruled for 11 years. They subsequently removed the �P� and maintained the NDC, which became a registered political party with the same driver, passengers and aplankes like Aseidu Nketia and ruled for another eight years. It must be noted however that the driver did not drive on Brazilian coffee, he had a clear vision. It is this driver from the PNDC, through to the NDC 1 and 2, who brought people like Aseidu Nketia into the political limelight and improved their social and economic well being. Ex-President Rawlings� criticisms of the massive corruption in the NDC administration has not gone down well with the NDC, as a result of which a barrage of insults have been hurled towards the ex-President and his family by new political entrants like Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa and the rest to the chagrin and disbelief of ex-President Rawlings and his family. In fact, just a few weeks back, the NDC dispatched a high-powered delegation to the Rawlingses with the aim of assuaging their hurt feelings. They were virtually driven away. It is strange how the NDC can drag the image of the Rawlingses into such opprobrium not too long ago and turn round to solicit the support of this same person in an election in which defeat stares them in the face. When the NDC regional officers in the Central region prevented Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings from entering a public place to thank even those who did not vote for her in Sunyani, and embarrassed her in a manner that even her political opponents never did to her, did they think they would need their support in the 2012 elections. But I heard some of their disrespectful young rabble rousers saying that they do not need Rawlings to win their election. Why are they preparing to finance the 30th anniversary of the December revolution, an occasion, nilly- willy, so dear to the heart of Jerry Rawlings? The NDC is so desperate and is holding on to a straw. What makes them think that Jerry Rawlings, in all his imperfections, would put his image on the line to defend such blatant criminality as the collection of GH�690 million by the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) into a secret account for purposes not known to Ghanaians? Do they expect Papa Jay to come and defend the lethargic and almost connivance of the Attorney-General of the Republic in the loss of GH�42million by the state? Do they expect Jerry John Rawlings to swim in the filthy waters of the scandalous US$20 million party headquarters? Aaa, they expect him to campaign for them to win political power and after that they dump him, disgrace him and his family, look on unconcerned when they have no place to lay their heads? Ghanaians should brace themselves for a very well resourced 30th anniversary of the revolution which aborted the third Republican attempt at practicing democratic governance in this country. Cows and goats will be in abundance, mahogany bitters would be yours for the asking, eulogies, praises and idolization of Jerry John Rawlings will take the centre stage. His position as the Founder of the NDC will be restored and all those who in the past three years have shown such grave disrespect to the founder will be publicly admonished to calm the founder so that �collectively we can move forward to win the 2012 elections�. Fellow Ghanaians, this is Flt Lt Kwesi Biney reporting from Busua Beach Resort.