FIFTH CRITIQUE OF KWAMENA AHWOI’S WORKING WITH RAWLINGS
KWAMENA AHWOI’S WORKING WITH RAWLINGS – AMIDU’S FIFTH CRITIQUE CONCLUDING AUTHOR’S CLAIMS AROUND “TWO DIFFICULT YEARS”
BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU
INTRODUCTION
The author of Working with Rawlings, Kwamena Ahwoi, in his larger narrative on the processes within the NDC towards the political succession to President Rawlings as the President of Ghana, constructed in a mechanical manner what he called an alleged split in the NDC following the “Swedru Declaration” without regard to the dynamic phenomenon of social interaction between and amongst groups. As a Professor and academic, the author appears to have done so purposefully in order to ignore the facts and data on what really led to the alleged split in the NDC and the active contribution of the author and his cohort of puppet masters of Professor Mills to that process. In this portion of the concluding critique on what the author calls the two difficult years 1999-2000, the author’s narrative will be deconstructed to expose the unethical concoctions of the facts and evidence used to support his conclusions.
This critique will, therefore, begin with a discourse on understanding group dynamics and conflicts before an examination is made of the role of Augustus Goosie Tanoh, the rumours of a Reform Movement alongside the alleged covert support for it by Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, Larry Adjetey and Martin Amidu, and the eventual split in the NDC that led to the formation of the National Reform Party. The contest between Dr. Obed Asamoah and Alhaji Mahama Iddrisu to become the running mate to Professor Mills and the allegation that President Rawlings and his wife had decided in advance on Dr. Asamoah as the running mate to Professor Mills will be deconstructed and shown to be a distortion and concoction of the facts.
UNDERSTANDING GROUP DYNAMICS AND CONFLICT IN THE PNDC/NDC
Kwamena Ahwoi, the author of Working with Rawlings mechanically constructed what he called ‘The “Swedru Declaration and” the NDC Split.’ In doing so he exhibited a complete ignorance as a scholar and academic of the organic nature of group formation, intra-group, and inter-group dynamics, and conflict as a function of every universal social human interaction. The PNDC and later the NDC exhibited the normal intra-group dynamics and showed the characteristic group conflict interaction resulting from struggles to achieve incompatible and divergent group objects and goals within the general unifying world view of the group that others may call an ideology.
The uncertainties surrounding the PNDC’s transition to constitutional rule and the eventual establishment of the Consultative Assembly, 1991, did not manifest only at the national level inter-group conflict interaction between supporters and opponents of the PNDC, but also in the latent intra-group and inter-group conflicts within the PNDC and its associate organs. The eventual succession to Chairman Rawlings as the Head of State became a source of latent intense conflict within the PNDC Government and in the Consultative Assembly, 1991.
Captain Kojo Tsikata (Rtd.) had associated with and led the CPP faction within the PNDC and an outgroup of CPP supporters who looked up to and depended on him for political guidance. While the Consultative Assembly was in session, he championed and facilitated the formation, and later registration of the National Convention Party (NCP) from his office. This move was vehemently opposed by other groups within the PNDC symbolically led by Mr. Justice D. F. Annan who could not tolerate working within a purely Nkrumaist political party formation to contest for political power under the proposed constitutional dispensation. The inter-group conflict whether to handover to a CPP political formation or form a political party to contest for political power in the impending constitutional dispensation found a compromised resolution in the registration of the National Convention Party, and the National Democratic Congress to work as a progressive alliance.
Conflict studies and research has established that conflicts, including intra-group conflicts, which appear resolved always leave behind residues which inform the dynamics of the next conflict and its intensity. The intra-group conflicts that begun in the transition to constitutional rule simmered during the NDC 1 and 2 Governments and eventually led to Dr. Edward Andrew Botchwey (Dr. Kwesi Botchwey), Mr. Paul Victor Obeng, and Captain Kojo Tsikata who were active players within the 31 December Revolution group formation exiting their powerful positions at certain stages of the NDC Government. These former leading and aggrieved operatives would play no direct role in the NDC Government’s 2000 presidential election campaign. The factions that looked up to those aggrieved leaders while they held positions within the PNDC/NDC Governments continued tacitly to remain under their influence and direction from their positions outside government.
The faction within the PNDC/NDC that was loyal to and looked to Jerry John Rawlings for leadership was bound to come into conflict with the in-group perceived to be disloyal to the leadership of the 31 December Revolutionary process. The in-group perceived to be loyal to President Rawlings was bound to fracture if its leadership perceived that Rawlings was dinning with their implacable opponents within the NDC who had an agenda to short-change them in the political succession to Rawlings’ tenure as President. It is also a phenomenon of group dynamics that group loyalties and affiliations within an in-group changes over time.
Group members might be dissatisfied with the achievement of group aspirations and goals to the extent of exiting the group to join other out-groups; form their own group(s); and rejoin the original group when in their perception the group’s circumstances have changed. Group conflicts can, therefore, be explained organically as a living phenomenon and not mechanically. This explains the return of Captain Tsikata, Dr. Kwesi Botchwey, and P. V. Obeng, amongst others at various stages after the NDC lost the 2000 presidential elections to influence the group dynamics and conflict within the NDC again and to contest the place of President Rawlings within the NDC as its founder and leader.
It is within such an organic context of understanding group dynamics and conflicts that one has to approach an objective study of the political succession to President Rawlings after the statement President Rawlings made at Agona Swedru on 6 June 1998 to support vice president Mills if he decided to contest the 2000 presidential elections. It is, therefore, premised on the foregoing understanding of in-group dynamics and conflicts that an analysis of the so-called “Swedru Declaration” and the split in the NDC mechanically constructed by the author and his other puppet masters will be made.
The in-group faction of Professor Mills’ puppeteers who manipulated and orchestrated the false perception that President Rawlings had irrevocably appointed Professor Mills his successor for the 2000 presidential elections should have known that their actions were not going to be accepted by their known group opponents within the NDC without an interactive reaction (fight). The perception that Professor Mills’ puppet masters prevented him by undue pressure and influence from exercising his free will in deciding whether or not to accept the offer to be the NDC’ presidential candidate for the 2000 elections was the fundamental catalyst for the split in the NDC. The puppet masters of Professor Mills who acted to impose their selfish agenda on him were the authors of the NDC split after the so-called Swedru Declaration and not President Rawlings as Kwamena Ahwoi tried unsuccessfully to present in his narrative.
AUGUSTUS GOOSIE TANOH AND THE REFORM MOVEMENT
Augustus Goosie Tanoh had always been a dynamic and leading cadre of the 31 December Revolution and the NDC. Goosie had contributed enormously to the transition to Constitutional rule as a leading member of the 31 December Revolutionary process, and of the Consultative Assembly, 1991 that crafted and wrote the Constitutional Proposal for the Fourth Republic that was approved at a referendum on 28 April 1992. The committed and well informed cadres of the 31 December Revolution knew that the cadre corps was an amalgam of diverse groups with varying revolutionary ideals and goals. This played out right from the inception of the 31 December Revolution leading up to the exile of intelligent leading comrades who disagreed with the manner of prosecuting the 31 December Revolutionary process and repeated in the 2000 split within the NDC after the Agona Swedru statement by President Rawlings.
Goosie Tanoh had his own following of cadres and other political formations within the PNDC, the Consultative Assembly and the NDC. Chairman/President Rawlings, and Captain Tsikata occasionally held separate meetings with various faction leaders within the PNDC/NDC. Goosie moved the deliberations of the Consultative Assembly in what he considered a progressive direction and was one of those cadres within the Assembly who assisted in ensuring that the fake transitional provisions that were being smuggled into the proposed constitution were exposed and rejected. My understanding as the Chairman of the House Committee of the Assembly was that Goosie had an assigned job from Chairman Rawlings to keep the cadres of the 31 December Revolution together after the return to Constitutional rule. As the Chairman of the House Committee of the Consultative Assembly, I worked closely with Goosie Tanoh to actualize a constitution to contain the pivotal ideals of the 31 December Revolution for Ghana. I also worked directly to Goosie Tanoh’s father, Nana Oboudum Tanoh, who was the Attorney General and I did not consider it proper to have a close relationship with his son. I was not within Goosie’s circle of personal friends.
The sub-group in the PNDC that eventually became the creator of Professor Mills as Vice President and his puppet masters formed a powerful comprador group within the PNDC and later in the NDC. It does not take rocket scientific knowledge to discern that these bunch of self-styled puppet masters and perceived double agents who had plied their trade with President Rawlings were going to face an intra-group conflict with some faction of committed cadres of the 31 December Revolution when it came to light that they had been behind the choice of Professor Mills as Vice President and were again mobilizing to have him coronated as the presidential candidate of the NDC for the 2000 elections.
The most analytical and enlightened cadres of the revolution did not need any rumours to convince them about the intentions of Kwamena Ahwoi and his other known puppet masters for styling what President Rawlings said at Agona Swedru as “the Swedru Declaration” as though President Rawlings had appointed Professor Mills his successor without allowing him a choice in the matter. Everything boiled down to divergent intra-group aspirations and goals. The stage was thus set for the show down between Goosie Tano’s faction, and Kwamena Ahwoi’s faction of puppet master of Professor Mills that resulted in the Reform Movement, and the establishment of the National Reform Party.
I appreciated the conflicts dynamics that was taking place within the NDC for the succession to President Rawlings. I did not become a player in the intra-group conflict interaction for personal, family, and cultural reasons. Professor Mills and his wife had been my family’s friends for decades and I had been a regular feature of Naadu Mills and Professor Mills’ house on Legon campus years before and after I became PNDC Deputy Secretary in February 1983. I had no reason not to want Professor Mills to be President of Ghana by contesting the 2000 presidential elections if he so wished as offered by President Rawlings at Agona Swedru.
Rumours of a Reform Movement
The orchestration of the “media rendition” of President Rawlings’ statement offering support to Professor Mills if he decided to contest the 2000 elections was the immediate cause of the intra NDC conflict about the succession to President Rawlings even before Professor Mills could be goaded by his puppet masters to reluctantly make the positive decision to contest the elections. The suspected personal involvement of four of Professor Mills’ puppet masters in spreading and misrepresenting President Rawlings’ offer at Agona Swedru without more would have been a source of intra-party conflict within the NDC. These puppet masters were people who were long seen by the mass of the 31 December cadres as opportunist trying to take control of the revolutionary process and thereafter control of the NDC after Rawlings’ presidency. These puppet masters are still at their long game within the NDC even today.
The dissatisfaction within a majority of the cadres of the 31 December Revolution against the opportunistic elements within the revolution carried over from the PNDC regime into the NDC was visible to those who had eyes to see and ears to hear. Augustus Goosie Tanoh became the main figure around whom a faction of the cadres rallied for debate, engaged in negotiations, and contested the machinations of their perceived adversaries of puppet masters and opportunist to hijack the NDC away from the revolutionary agenda.
After the transition to Constitutional rule, Goosie Tanoh did not hold any position in the Government. Goosie Tanoh had made it known that his main concern was to secure the future of the cadres of the 31 December Revolution within the constitutional dispensation. The information I gathered from some of the cadres at the time was that Goosie Tanoh had been collaborating with Chairman Rawlings since the beginning of the transitional process to constitutional rule to ensure the welfare of cadres under constitutional rule. The worry about the future of cadres within the constitutional regime eventually led to the registration of the Association of the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (ACDR) as a company limited by guarantee under the Companies Code. Some cadres believed that it was part of this process of rehabilitation and integration of cadres into the constitutional political formation that led to the incorporation of a limited liability company called Commodities General by Goosie Tanoh.
Goosie Tanoh and I knew and respected each other as cadres of the 31 December Revolution. We never belonged to the same in-group faction of the cadre organization or the NDC. Augustus Goosie Tanoh never discussed any intentions to form a sub-group to seek internal democracy within the PNDC or the NDC with me. I was not also associated with Kyeretwie Opoku, Mije Barnor, Osei-wusu, and Peter Kpordugbe who were or became Goosie Tanoh’s partners in the Reform Movement, and later the National Reform Party when it was formed. I could not, therefore, have been overtly or covertly associated with any cadre faction that discussed the formation of any reformist movement within the NDC, let alone to silently support them as insinuated by Kwamena Ahwoi and cowardly attributed to rumours.
Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur who was accused with me by the author as silently supporting the reform defection, became a PNDC Deputy Secretary for Finance years after my appointment as PNDC Deputy Secretary. Paa Kwesi had no personal relationship with me as far as revolutionary ideals and direction were concerned. Paa Kwesi, like the author, was my contemporary at the University of Ghana as students, who later became a lecturer in the Economics Department at the University of Ghana. He was a known close friend and associate of Professor Mills before the latter became an Acting, and then the Commissioner for the Internal Revenue Service, and later still, the Vice President of Ghana. The available facts do not support the contention that Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur betrayed Professor Mills to associate with or join the Reform Movement against him.
The author, Kwamena Ahwoi, himself lends support to my knowledge of the facts of the relationship between Professor Mills and Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur when he wrote in his Working with Rawlings at page 153 that Professor Mills got greatly upset when Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur who was a member of Professor Mills’ campaign team was removed by President Rawlings from the Presidential Jet which was enroute from Tamale to Accra in a very humiliating manner. The Presidential Jet had been put at Professor Mills’ disposal and Mr. Amissah-Arthur was part of his traveling team. This demonstrates that the attribution to rumours by the author that Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur was a silent supporter of the Reform Movement was one of the usual unethical fabrications of data by the author in pursuit of his scholarly objectives. The author also knew the unwritten history or untold story of how Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur had to secure Professor Mills’ residence at Manet Estates to enable him to vacate his official vice president’s residence when the NDC lost the 2000 election, and it is surprising, therefore, that he would after the death of Paa Kwesi attempt to cast him as having ever betrayed Professor Mills in Working with Rawlings, published in 2020.
Larry Adjetey, another of my fellow accused, and I never discussed any cadre affairs before or after the Swedru Declaration. Whatever I thought of the group of cadres who were dissatisfied with the puppet masters manipulating the NDC political process in support of Professor Mills for their individual political self-interest with the long view of undermining President Rawlings, could not have led me to any type of silent support for any reformist movement within the NDC. My personal relationship with Professor Mills and my affinity to the two major candidates who had thrown in their hats to contest to be Professor Mills’ running mates at the 2000 presidential elections disabled me from doing so.
THE TWO CONTESTANTS TO BE MILLS’ RUNNING MATE
The Ghana Law Reports for the years 1999 and 2000 will support my contention that I was too busy preparing and representing the Government in the Courts to have had time for plotting against no less a personal friend than Professor Mills. In any case, the orchestrated so-called “Swedru Declaration” landed me between the devil and the deep blue sea to be involved with Amissah-Arthur and Larry Adjetey in any silent support for any rebel reform movement against the NDC.
Dr. Obed Asamoah, the then Attorney General and Minister for Justice, to whom I worked as Deputy Attorney General had exhibited openly and mentioned to me his interest in becoming the running mate to Professor Mills. Contemporaneous records I made show that Dr. Asamoah and I discussed the issue of who should be the running mate to Mills on Tuesday, 30 and Wednesday, 31 March 1999. (Later on 31 March 1999 Kofi Totobi-Quakyi, Dr. Asamoah and I discussed President Rawlings’ trip to the United States of America). Alhaji Mahama Iddrisu, whom by northern tradition and custom was my elder brother within the PNDC and the NDC had also confided in me his interest in being the running mate to Professor Mills.
It was only the blind and deaf who did not see or hear about the rivalry between Dr. Asamoah and Alhaji Iddrisu to become the running mate to Professor Mills. It was, and still is, an unadulterated taboo in northern Ghanaian custom and tradition to seek the position sought by a senior brother or having given one’s word to support any person to a particular position to turn round and seek that position for oneself. Professor Mills experienced the nature of this northern tradition and customs on 3 September 2000 when he invited me to make the offer to me to become his running mate.
The rivalry between Dr. Obed Asamoah and Alhaji Mahama Iddrisu for consideration and nomination by Professor Mills as his running mate for the 2000 election was so overt for any sincere scholar or academic, worth the name, to term the events as rumours. The NDC and other members of the progressive alliance were divided down the middle as to their preference for either Dr. Asamoah or Alhaji Iddrisu as running mate to candidate Mills at the 2000 NDC presidential candidate.
The imposition of Dr. Asamoah as running mate for Professor Mills
The Ahwoi brothers sought political dominance and influence during the era of the PNDC Government alongside their co-conspirators and continued to do so within the NDC. Professor Mills was an honest, very transparent, and forthright soul with those he counted as his personal friends. Consequently, if President Rawlings and his wife had decided on Dr. Obed Asamoah for the position of running mate for Professor Mills and Rawlings had succeeded in convincing Professor Mills to accept Dr. Asamoah as his running mate, albeit reluctantly, that arrangement would have become a matter of fact and not a rumour as described by the author.
My personal knowledge and working relationship with Professor Mills were that he would have confided the arrangements with President Rawlings to make Obed his running mate in his close and trusted associates such as his puppet masters. Those puppet masters would have reacted positively or negatively against the arrangement or as the Goebbels’ of Professor Mills would have leaked it to others to react to it. Kwamena Ahwoi confirms the foregoing at page 151 of Working with Rawlings when he states that: “…Professor Mills had confided in the three of us that President Rawlings was trying to impose Dr. Asamoah on him, but that he was very uncomfortable with the idea and very reluctant to accept him ….” This proves that whatever rumour Kwamena Ahwoi was premising his scholarly work upon became a fact and not a rumour told to his two colleague puppet masters and him by Professor Mills himself.
It speaks volumes to Kwamena Ahwoi’s competence as an academic and a scholar not to have realized the absurdity of his narrative on this matter. How and why would Professor Mills have reluctantly agreed to an arrangement with President Rawlings to have Dr. Obed Asamoah as his running mate and in the same breath arranged with Professor Mills to pretend that no such arrangement took place as narrated by the author at page 151 as follows:
“…. For whatever reason, and it appears this was a strategy conceived by President Rawlings, Rawlings got Professor Mills to be the one who broached the subject of having Dr. Asamoah as his running mate to him (President Rawlings). President Rawlings informed Professor Mills that he wanted to discuss the subject with some ‘comrades’ of his. These ’comrades’ turned out to be Mr. Daniel Ohene Agyekum, Mr. Kofi Totobi-Quakyi and I.”?
This narrative by the author, Kwamena Ahwoi, lacks consistency, coherence, and fidelity by any stretch of scholarly narrative analysis known to communications and research studies or practice. President Rawlings was an accomplished strategist and tactician to have put himself in the embarrassing situation narrated by Kwamena Ahwoi. The author’s narrative is not vindicated by the known and tested conduct of Rawlings by those of us who also worked with Rawlings.
The author had to fabricate a discourse in which President Rawlings summoned the triumvirate of Daniel Ohene Agyekum, Kofi Totobi-Quakyi, and Kwamena Ahwoi to discuss Dr. Asamoah’s candidature after Professor Mills had already accepted that proposal. The triumvirate of puppet masters were then to emerge as the heroes who brought Rawlings to his senses as to the unsuitability of Dr. Asamoah as the running mate. The author, Kwamena Ahwoi, consequently informed his readers that President Rawlings summoned the triumvirate of ‘comrades’ to discuss the issue of Obed’s vice-presidential candidacy about which Professor Mills had already confided in them. The author because he was fabricating the data and evidence as usual, omitted to narrate to his readers how President Rawlings went about seeking the opinion of the triumvirate.
Did President Rawlings tell the triumvirate when he summoned them that Professor Mills had already accepted Dr. Asamoah as the vice presidential candidate at his insistence and that he was seeking their views post facto? Did President Rawlings tell them that he was seeking their opinion before agreeing with Professor Mills on Dr. Asamoah’s candidature? How and what precisely did President Rawlings tell the triumvirate of ‘comrades’ to elicit the response Ohene Agyekum, their spokesman, allegedly presented as their rehearsed arguments against Obed’s candidacy?
According to the author the argument of Ohene Agyekum, their spokesman, against Obed’s candidature went as follows:
“Mr. President, in 1992 you, an Ewe from the Volta Region, ran with Arkaah a Fante from the Central Region. In 1996, you. An Ewe from the Volta Region, ran with Mills, again a Fante from the Central Region. If in 2000, Mills a Fante from the Central Region should run with Obed, an Ewe from the Volta Region, the other ethnic groups within the NDC will begin to question whether there were no persons with leadership qualities in the other ethnic groups and the other eight regions.”
The fallacy about Dr. Obed Asamoah’s ethnicity and denigration of Mills
The alleged argument against the candidature of Dr. Asamoah to anybody who knew the facts about Dr. Asamoah’s ethnicity also lacks both narrative coherence, fidelity, and consistency. Dr. Obed Asamoah hails from the then Volta Region, but he is not an Ewe by ethnicity. Dr. Obed Asamoah is from the Guan ethnic group of the mid and northern Volta Region who assert their distinct ethnicity. Dr. Asamoah is patrilineally from the Likpe stock of the Guan ethnic group. His late mother hailed from the Ejisu Royal House of Asante and all those who were close enough to Dr. Obed Asamoah to have attended his mother’s funeral in 1988 would have known the maternal origins of Dr. Asamoah. Dr. Asamoah could pass for an Asante from the Ashanti Region if he chose to stake a claim to his matrilineal royalty and inheritance. There is another ethical problem with the words the author, Kwamena Ahwoi, put into the mouth of their spokesman, Daniel Ohene Agyekum. Did Kwamena Ahwoi record the proceedings of their conversation with President Rawlings contemporaneously to capture the exact words used by Ohene Agyekum or how did he come by the quoted words without indicating that he was paraphrasing his recollection of what Ohene Agyekum said?
President Rawlings knew Dr. Obed Asamoah better than any of the trusted ‘comrades’ he summoned to discuss his alleged candidature. At the time Rawlings was alleged to have convinced Professor Mills to accept Dr. Asamoah as his running mate which Professor Mills did, albeit reluctantly, President Rawlings knew that Dr. Obed Asamoah was and is not an Ewe even though he hailed from the geographical Volta Region. President Rawlings also knew Dr. Asamoah’s connection to the Ejisu Royal Stool of Ashanti. This is why the narrative by the author containing the exclamation “Jesus” and the words “Why have I not thought of this? Gentlemen you are right. Obed will be the wrong choice. It is true I have already told him his candidacy was a “done deal’ I will have to go and undo what I have done” or words to that effect’ are pertinently unethical fabrications. This further supports the mounting accumulation of the author’s unethical scholarly style of narrative presentation which were exposed in the previous critique of Working with Rawlings.
The real intention of the author, Kwamena Ahwoi, was to paint President Rawlings as an autocrat who did not brook dissent from even his vice president such that Professor Mills was so terrified or afraid of him to engage in a one-on-one discussion with him on the reasons for not accepting Dr. Asamoah as the vice- presidential candidate. Professor Mills had to confide in his puppet masters to convey to President Rawlings his objections to Dr. Asamoah. A close reading of the author’s narrative, however, discloses that narrative as more destructive of the image of Professor Mills as not being a self-willed and independent person having the capacity for judgement required of a potential President of Ghana. The author ended up conveying a picture of Professor Mills as not being his own man. The coinage by opponents of the NDC of the term “poodle” to describe their perception of Professor Mills’ nature as a man was vindicated by Kwamena Ahwoi’s narrative describing the Vice President’s behaviour in Working with Rawlings.
The discerning and critical reader would also have realized that Kwamena Ahwoi purported all along to paint a picture of President Rawlings in his narrative of the Ho coronation as person who craved to be worshipped as the President. This informed the disaster portending note Kwamena Ahwoi passed over to Professor Mills to incorporate into his prepared speech to satisfy the supposed ego of President Rawlings. Kwamena Ahwoi was so consumed in destroying the image of President Rawlings as a statesman that he unconsciously lost sight of the fact that he had for a long time been painting a picture of Professor Mills in a manner that was articulated by opponents of the NDC after the coronation acceptance speech. Kwamena Ahwoi was, therefore, solely responsible for the derogatory words that the opponents of the NDC used to describe Professor Mills after his acceptance speech at his Ho coronation: ‘‘Mills cannot be his own man’,; Rawlings to rule from behind; ‘Rawlings to teleguide Mills; Mills – Rawlings’ Poodle’; and “vote Mills, Get JJ Free!’”.
CONCLUSIONS
This segment of the discourse and critique of Kwamena Ahwoi’s Working with Rawlings has shown the organic and systemic nature of group dynamics and conflict as the main phenomenon that led to the split in the NDC. It has also shown the conscious and unconscious interactions of the author and his cohort of puppet masters in the NDC that escalated and contributed to the intra-group conflict dynamics that led to the eventual split in the NDC after the Swedru Declaration and the formation of the National Reform Party.
The critique has further deconstructed the author’s narrative to show that President Rawlings knew that Dr. Obed Asamoah was not an Ewe by ethnicity. In the process of deconstructing the author’s narrative of Dr. Asamoah’s concocted Ewe ethnicity this discourse exposed the fallacy underpinning the quoted words attributed to Rawlings when he allegedly discussed his attempt to impose Dr. Asamoah on Professor Mills with his so-called true comrades.
The foregoing critique has shown that Kwamena Ahwoi unethically held himself out as indispensable in the difficult manoeuvres and decisions taken in the two difficult years, especially in finding a running mate for Professor Mills by fabricating and asserting that: ‘And with that, the “Obed for Veep” agenda was effectively scuttled.’ The reader is now placed in a better position to appreciate for himself Kwamena Ahwoi’s competences as an honourable Professor of Law, a scholar and academic who set out “…to give present and future leaders some idea about governance at the highest levels; the dos and don’ts of governance; the skills required for governance and the importance of human relations as a leadership trait.”
Martin A. B. K. Amidu
24 May 2023