44TH ANNIVERSARY OF JUNE 4 AND JERRY JOHN RAWLINGS
THE 44TH ANNIVERSARY OF JUNE 4 AND JERRY JOHN RAWLINGS AS FOUNDING FATHER OF THE NDC
BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU
The 44th Anniversary of the June 4 uprising is today Sunday, 4 June 2023, and it is time to reflect on the wisdom and purpose of the Constitution of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) providing in article 6 that: “The Founding Father of the party is Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings upon whose vision and leadership the Party was established”; and further recognizing June 4 as Accountability Day and 31 December as Revolution Day in article 51 thereof. Those of us who were part of the process and in the room when the NDC was founded and established know that Flt Lt. Jerry John Rawlings deserves more than this recognition in juxtaposition to the traitors who are in fact and indeed covert collaborators to those who started the formation of the National Convention Party with the agenda of stealing the gains of the June 4 and 31 December Revolutions.
The June 4 and 31 December Revolutions as Accountability Day and Revolution Day respectively stand eternally to the glory of the gallant men and women led by Flt. Lt Jerry John Rawlings who tried to ensure probity, accountability, and transparency in public life and the protection of the public purse. This is the legacy that these true and selfless comrades left engrafted in the 1992 Constitution of Ghana and the NDC Constitution.
On the occasion of the 44th Anniversary celebration of June 4 as Accountability Day, true cadres committed to upholding the ideals and value system enshrined in the 1992 Constitution, and the NDC Constitution ought to realize that the NDC is the only remaining vehicle that the mass of suffering Ghanaians look up to emancipate them from the comprador led NPP Government which has mortgaged our lives to their foreign capitalist overlords to deepen our misery and penury. The NDC needs a formidable team that can deliver the votes at the 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections, and to try its luck at changing the suffering of the ordinary Ghanaian from the slavery it is enduring at the hands of the compradors and lackeys of imperialism and neocolonialism.
The 44th Anniversary of the June 4 uprising is the time for the NDC to decide whether it is still a party founded by President Rawlings or one that has been taken over by the traitors that tried to re-write the history of the PNDC and NDC in the infamous Working with Rawlings. The saying by Duncan, King of Scotland in McBeth about the Thane of Cawdor came to have practical meaning for President Rawlings only when he ceased to be President of Ghana after 7 January 2001- “There is no art to find the minds construction in the face. He was a gentlemen on whom I based an absolute trust.” The ‘comrades’ for almost twenty years in whom he based an absolute trust turned round to stab him in the back as Brutus did to Julius Caesar, except that Rawlings sustained a deep wound to his trust in comrades generally.
The defeat of the NDC’s Professor Mills and Martin Amidu at the 2000 presidential election was put at the door of President Rawlings for continuing to take the spotlight in the campaign thereby occasioning the defeat when Professor Mills and the deep state actors from the Central and Western Regions who had taken him hostage as a kinsman could not deliver the votes from their own regions.
The 2004 presidential election at which the confederacy that had taken over Professor Mills tried to distance him from President Rawlings, the NDC fared worse in the results of that election. Despite the enormous campaign effort put in by President Rawlings, Professor Mills ended up with 44.6% of the total votes as against 52.45% for President Kufuor. At the regional level Professor Mills and his cohort of usurping traitors could still not deliver their regions – the Central and Western Regions.
The 2008 presidential election was narrowly won, thanks to the hard work and tenacity of President Rawlings at the second run off of the presidential election. The NDC had won the parliamentary seats in 131 constituencies as against the NPP’s 99 seats. Notwithstanding this parliamentary victory the NDC’s Professor Mills managed to get only a razor thin victory of 50.23% against Nana Akufo-Addo’s 49.77% to become the President of Ghana. Professor Mills and his minders from the Central and Western Regions could deliver only 53% of the votes as against the 46.7%, and 51.9% against 48.1% respectively for those regions.
Paradoxically, the victory of the NDC at the 2008 presidential election gave President Rawlings’ trusted comrades, turned traitors, who looked like innocent flowers but were the serpents under the flowers, the opportunity to sideline and consummate their betrayal of President Rawlings as shown in the re-writing of the history of the PNDC and NDC contained in Kwamena Ahwoi’s Working with Rawling published in July 2020, a few months before the demise of President Rawlings.
As part of taking over the NDC and erasing the legacy of President Rawlings from the NDC, the Ahwoi siblings and their cohort of comrades turned traitors muscled their way to use a decoy for their takeover plan, their surrogate, Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, the foreword writer, editor, and reviewer of Working with Rawlings as the NDC running mate for the 2020 presidential election. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang and her traitorous mentors could not still deliver even the Central and Western Regions at the 2020 presidential election. President Rawlings did not live to see this, but at the 2020 elections his prediction on 15 October 2018 and 29 October 2020 of the toxic nature of the Ahwoi brothers and their cohort of deep NDC actors to the electoral fortunes of the NDC came to pass. The Ahwoi siblings and their cohorts are still at their game canvassing for their surrogate as running mate for 2024. See Opoku Agyemang deserves to be retained running mate for Mahama – Kwasi Ahwoi | Starr Fm
Before the demise of President Rawling on 12 November 2020, he had instructed that a funeral donation which the Ahwoi siblings, in whom he had placed so much trust as Chairman and later President of Ghana, sent to his mother’s funeral on 24 October 2020 be returned to them because the donation could not have been given in good faith after stabbing him in Working with Rawlings. The Rubicon had been crossed in the relationship between the founding father of the NDC and the traitors seeking to usurp and divert the course of the NDC.
John Dramani Mahama has been elected by the NDC as its flagbearer and can serve only one term under the 1992 Constitution. The social, political, and economic mess of our country today dictates that should John Mahama win the 2024 presidential election it will take more than six years to undo the mess that will be left behind by the NPP and restore the Ghanaian politico-socio-economic system to full health within the next seven years. The NDC will, therefore, need a running mate who can deliver not only a sizeable vote from his or her region but can win resoundingly at the 2028 presidential election to complete whatever John Mahama may start in January 2025. With the future being unknown, Ghana will be done a disservice should the NDC field a running mate whose track record of delivering his or her own region at the polls has been shown to be non-existent.
The next NDC running mate for the 2024 presidential elections should also determine whether the NDC has given up on Jerry John Rawlings’ ideals and fallen for his traitors and their surrogates as the new overlords of the NDC. It will also determine whether John Dramani Mahama has returned to restore the NDC to its previous glory or just to save his face from his defeat in the 2016 presidential election without caring about what happens at the 2028 presidential election.
I stand with Rawlings on the occasion of the 44th Anniversary of June 4. One cannot stand with Rawlings and the traitors simultaneously. Take a side. Do not sit on the fence for it may break.
Martin A. B. K. Amidu
4 June 2023