EIGHTH CRITIQUE OF KWAMENA AWHOI’S WORKING WITH RAWLINGS
KWAMENA AHWOI’S WORKING WITH RAWLINGS -AMIDU’S CRITIQUE OF THE AUTHOR AND THE PUPPETEERS
BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU
INTRODUCTION
Kwamena Ahwoi presented himself throughout Working with Rawlings as the brain behind every successful achievement of President Rawlings, the PNDC and the NDC Governments. He narrated how he became the chief puppet master of Professor Mills who observed and made judgment “in his political naïveté”. The author portrayed Professor Mills in Working with Rawlings as a poodle who never grew out of his political naiveites and continued to depend upon the political and policy wisdom of Kwamena Ahwoi, his other Ahwoi brothers, Kofi Totobi-Quakyi, Daniel Ohene Agyekum, Nana Ato Dadzie and other cohort of puppeteers.
Kwamena Ahwoi and his cohort of puppeteers, however, failed to accept responsibility for any errors of judgment or advice they proffered to either President Rawlings or to Professor Mills. These double agents took credit for making binding calculations on who should be Professor Mills’ running mate for the 2000 election but lacked the humility to accept responsibility for their role in the fiasco of the Ho coronation, the composition of Professor Mills campaign team, and the planning of the campaign strategy.
This concluding critique will examine and analyze Professor Mills’ campaign team and campaign strategy for the 2000 presidential elections and conclude that Kwamena Ahwoi and his puppeteers had unchallenged influence on the campaign process through their absolute control of Professor Mills in the decisions of the NDC on the nature of the NDC Campaign Team and the Campaign Strategy for the 2000 presidential election. Consequently, they were substantially, if not exclusively, responsible for the abysmal failure of that election campaign.
THE CAMPAIGN TEAM AND THE CAMPAIGN STRATEGY
The author constructed his narrative on the campaign team and the campaign strategy wishing the world to believe that as the chief puppet master of Professor Mills, his cohort of puppet masters and he stood by or aloof for Mills’ campaign and campaign strategy to portend doom. The historical facts as we lived them contradict the Ahwois’ and their cohort of puppet masters’ presentation of self in the author’s narrative. The puppeteers had unchallenged influence on the campaign process through their absolute control of Professor Mills in the decisions of the NDC on the nature of the NDC Campaign Team and the Campaign Strategy for the 2000 presidential election. They were an integral part of the decision to select the campaign theme: “Continuity in Change” which fed into the NPP propaganda of “vote Mills Get JJ Free” quoted by Kwamena Ahwoi in Working with Rawlings. These were the puppeteers who imposed upon Professor Mills the unplanned insertion of words in his Ho Coronation speech which doomed Professor Mills campaign from its inception and earned him derogatory names from opponents of the NDC during the campaign.
It was, therefore, disingenuous, and profoundly unethical of the scholarly style of Kwamena Ahwoi to state that: “The nature of the NDC Campaign Team and the campaign strategy for the 2000 presidential election portended doom for Professor Mills” as though his cohorts of puppeteers and he were innocent bystanders to those decisions. The true nature of the author’s above quoted statement revealed the dubious and ambiguous nature of the next sentence in which the author stated that: “One veteran of the 1992 and 1996 NDC campaign described the 2000 campaign as a ‘ramshackle of a campaign.’”
The so-called veteran campaigner remained anonymous and could have been an ex post facto rationalization by Kwamena Ahwoi and his cohort of puppet masters’ own reflexivity on their failures that let Professor Mills down in the 2000 presidential election. Kwamena Ahwoi and his cohorts of puppeteers do not even attempt to take responsibility for allowing, their puppet, Professor Mills, to wait until the last hour, 3 September 2000, to nominate a running mate. The author was, however, quick to attribute the failure of the 2000 campaign in part to the fact that: “So much energy had been expended on the vice presidential candidacy position that created a deep cleavage within the leadership of the party and therefore within the campaign team.”
The author, Kwamena Ahwoi, also exhibited muddled thinking and reasoning as a scholar and academic in not realizing that he had laid ultimate responsibility for the nature of the NDC Campaign Team and Campaign Strategy on Professor Mills, the presidential candidate, when he wrote at page 153 to 154 of his Working with Rawlings that:
“Even though Professor Mills as the presidential candidate was supposed to be the focus of the campaign, it soon became obvious that he was not the best of campaigners and therefore the shine and the spotlight continued to be on President Rawlings.”
This was a clear admission that Kwamena Ahwoi, his Ahwoi brothers and other puppet masters who had groomed Professor Mills to milk his presidency in the future had refused or failed to convert their politically naïve puppet into his own man determined to win the 2000 presidential election on his own steam. But the author wrote, as though with tongue-in-cheek, in the paragraph immediately following the above quoted words that:
“There was no effective campaign message. While it was obvious that the people wanted change after 19 years of PNDC/NDC under Rawlings, the NDC selected a campaign theme that suggested that even though there was going to be a change in personalities, there was not going to be any change in policies and programmes…”
It bears repeating that Kwamena Ahwoi has demonstrated in Working with Rawlings that his fellow cohort of puppet masters and he never took responsibility for their own errors of judgment and failures. Kwamena Ahwoi had a sudden bout of amnesia to have remembered that on the spur of the moment words he misguidedly scribbled for Professor Mills to read in his Ho coronation acceptance speech irreparably doomed the Mills campaign - “When you retire in 2001, we will not allow you to go anywhere because we will come knocking at your door morning, noon, and night” and reflected the eventual “campaign theme that suggested that…. there was not going to be any change in policies and programmes.”
In writing Working with Rawlings, Kwamena Ahwoi, displayed symptoms of amnesia as he consistently did not remember the admissions he had already made in his scholarly narrative of events. For instance, the author appears not to have remembered that he admitted at page 150 that:
“The next day after the Ho coronation the opposition media and the sound bites of the opposition electronic media, it was as if committed a sacrilege and blasphemy. Mills cannot be his own man; Rawlings is to rule from behind; Rawlings to teleguide Mills’ …. Mills – Rawlings’ poodle’. The NPP slogan then turned it into its campaign song: ‘vote Mills, Get JJ Free!’”
The foregoing quoted words of the author shows clearly that Kwamena Ahwoi refused to accept the obvious fact that he indeed committed the sacrilege and blasphemy of scribbling the words that he urged Professor Mills to insert into an already vetted acceptance speech which Mills did against the basic rules of legal advocacy by any person properly enrolled as a lawyer which enabled the opposition media to denigrate the ability and will power of his poodle to be his own man as President of Ghana. A holistic reading of Working with Rawlings reveals Kwamena Ahwoi’s consistent unorthodox and unethical style of scholarship that first determines the conclusions he fathoms to reach and then tailoring his data and thesis to bring about those results. The basics of the philosophy and methods of research for scholarly writing enjoins a scholar to allow the data and facts to objectively speak for themselves and not to impose his subjective ideas on the facts and research data as it became the penchant of Professor Kwamena Ahwoi.
The Blame Game on Dr. Obed Asamoah and its refutation
Unfortunately, Kwamena Ahwoi had not grown out of not allowing his personal conflict style of attribution, and apportionment of blame to his perceived adversaries to control his objective presentation of the facts in Working with Rawlings. It is this emotional conflict style which he had been unable to tame as a self-presented academic and Professor of Law that led to him always to project his cohort of puppet masters and himself as the good and blameless guys in the subjective thesis he claims to have written to guide future leaders in the art of governance. Dr. Obed Asamoah, consequently, became Kwamena Ahwoi’s target or object for attribution and the blame game, at page 153, for instance:
“Dr. Obed Asamoah who was the de facto leader of the campaign team was very reticent and laid back in his attitude. Little wonder that tens of thousands of Atta Mills campaign paraphernalia, such as posters and flyers, which were supposed to be used in the campaign remained hoarded in his McCarthy Hill residence long after the election.”
The last sentence in the author’s quoted words supra, is easily dismissible by any reasonable reader as no iota of fact or evidence is offered in proof of the serious allegations of deliberate hoarding of Atta Mills’ campaign paraphernalia. The reader is not told how and by whom the campaign paraphernalia were discovered and counted long after the 2000 presidential election. Professor Kwamena Ahwoi wrote those words accusing and blaming Dr. Asamoah, therefore, the reader must accept or take them as gospel truth. The reader is also not told who the de jure leader of the campaign team was and who was responsible for the leader sleeping on the job. Yet, Kwamena Ahwoi holds himself out as a professor of law and engages in weird academic reasoning, by any standards.
Dr. Asamoah had been the Chairman of the Finance Committee of the NDC since 1992 and worked with Alhaji Baba Kamara, the National Treasurer of the NDC, to support the 2000 presidential election campaign, as he had done in previous elections. Dr. Asamoah, as common sense dictated, was not the leader of Professor Mills’ campaign team. Dr. Asamoah, who Mills had just refused to make his running mate, had no mandate to make disbursement decisions for Professor Mills, the leader of the NDC, and the leader of the NDC campaign for the 2000 elections in accordance with the NDC Constitution.
The inability of Professor Mills’ puppet masters because of his “political naivety” to skillfully manage the NDC campaign cannot pass on their incompetence to Dr. Asamoah. Kwamena Ahwoi’s fellow puppet master, the National Security Minister, Kofi Totobi-Quakyi, was another focal point of Professor Mills’ parallel campaign management whom Kwamena Ahwoi chose to conveniently forget about to enable him damnify Dr. Asamoah as the culprit. Professor Mills and his puppet masters had between 29 April 2000 and September 2000 when the Electoral Commission opened the nominations to have planned adequately for his campaign and its theme without squandering the golden opportunity.
The Ho coronation took place on 29 April 2000. But it was only on Wednesday, 13 September 2000 that Professor Mills invited Dr. Asamoah to be the titular head and chairman of the already existing campaign team. Dr. Asamoah informed me of the request by Professor Mills to him on Thursday, 14 September 2000 and told me that he had agreed to chair the campaign team with the knowledge that he was just going to be a figurehead. It was not lost on the more experienced Dr. Asamoah that his invitation to chair the campaign team was a proposal from the puppet masters intended as a psychological operation commonly referred to as PSYOP. Dr. Asamoah had no inhibition on 14 September 2000 in the conversation with me in his office in repeating his suspicions that President Rawlings had his own agenda for a comeback, while Professor Mills and puppet masters also had their own agenda which he tagged with an ethnic preface.
When I became the running mate to Professor Mills at the late hour of the campaign I had to deal with both the Ministry of National Security represented by Kofi Totobi-Quakyi, and Dr. Asamoah as Chairman of the Finance Committee of the NDC for financing and supporting my campaign. Consequently, I directed donations made to me directly to either of them to beef the general campaign fund. This was how it came that donations from a brother revolutionary comrade for my campaign were delivered on two different occasions – on Wednesday, 11 October 2000 for the 7 December 2000 election, and also for the second round of the elections on 28 December 2000 - to the Minister for National Security, Kofi Totobi-Quakyi. I had reminded Mr. Totobi-Quakyi about the first donation being still in my possession on Tuesday, 10 October 2000. He suggested to me to “melt it” and I insisted that I wanted it to be part of the general funds for the campaign. I delivered the donation which was in foreign currency to him in his office on Wednesday, 11 October 2000. (On the same afternoon, Dr. Asamoah advanced campaign funds to my campaign team which I informed the Kofi Totobi-Quakyi about). The second donation was received at a safe house just across the road from the Ghana International School and carried by the facilitating officer to the Minister for National Security who confirmed receipt of the donation to me. But Kofi Totobi-Quakyi contributed very little to my campaign for the 2000 presidential election as the running mate.
Dr. Asamoah, on the other hand, supported my campaign without ever a complain. I recollect vividly that in the second and last round of my assigned campaign visits to the north, Dr. Asamoah inquired from me what my campaign would need during the duration of my campaign visits there. In our ignorance, my campaign team submitted a modest estimate. Dr. Asamoah told me when I visited him for a follow-up that I did not understand how the party machinery worked at that stage of the campaign. He explained to me that my campaign would need more than what I had requested and I should remember that I was not going to have the ability to return to Accra for any further assistance due to time constraint. Dr. Asamoah had been General Secretary to a number of political parties previously, and his prediction was not only proven right but saved the day on my last campaign trip to the north for the second round of the 2000 presidential election.
An incident between Dr. Asamoah and me demonstrates further that Dr. Asamoah’s commitment to the 2000 presidential campaign was more than the puppet masters of Professor Mills, inclusive of the author. I have stated already that I had never prepared or thought of being a running mate for the 2000 presidential campaign. I, therefore, did not have what I came to understand is called “a war chest” for any campaign for those seeking political office. I had been so steeped in my socialist revolutionary ideals that building wealth for a rainy day was out of my political lexicon.
I had supported previous NDC election campaigns from my meagre resources and what was given to me on campaign trips for my support and also to be delivered to the regional and constituency party. Consequently, when Alhaji Mahama Iddrisu convinced me to accept to be the running mate, I was worried about what I was bringing to the table financially. I had already told Professor Mills when he tried convincing me to be his running mate, and when I eventually accepted the offer, of my financial unpreparedness for the task ahead. He had told me not to worry as that was also the situation he found himself in when he first run with President Rawling for office. I still worried.
Consequently, a kinsman organized a donation to support my campaign and delivered the donation in United States Dollars to me. Dr. Asamoah had been the Chairman of the Finance Committee of the NDC since its inception, and so, I went early the next morning, Monday, 27 November 2000, to Dr. Obed Asamoah’s office with the donation. I explained my inability to contribute to the general campaign and offered the donation given to me to him to add to the general campaign fund. Dr. Asamoah asked me to keep the donation because I may need it during the campaign or after. I had to put enormous pressure on Dr. Asamoah before he would reluctantly accept the donation. The donations delivered on Wednesday, 11 October 2000 to the Minister for National Security in United States Dollars for the first, and in Ghana cedis for the second legs respectively of my campaign just vanished into thin air.
Ghanaians who remember my vetting to be the Special Prosecutor by Parliament may be surprised by my recollection of events that go to the defence of Dr. Asamoah. At my vetting a member of the Appointments Committee on the NDC side of the House who might have been a toddler when we founded the NDC in 1992, quoted from a book written by Dr. Obed Asamoah, in which he was alleged to have written certain uncomplimentary things about me and my nomination as the running mate for the 2000 presidential election. I had not read and I still have not read Dr. Asamoah’s book to avoid the temptation of contesting whatever he wrote, and in any case, nobody volunteered to bring an autographed copy of Dr. Asamoah book to my residence for my perusal as happened with Working with Rawling.
But the fact that somebody abused his parliamentary immunity by reading portions allegedly written by Dr. Asamoah against me at my vetting, was not a rational reason in my culture and upbringing not to have given credit to Dr. Asamoah for the role he played in the 2000 presidential election campaign. The author, Kwamena Ahwoi, and his cohort of puppet masters of Professor Mills who were substantially, if not exclusively, responsible for the abysmal failure of that election campaign cannot be allowed to crucify the factual truth by pushing the entire blame unto Dr. Asamoah who was not the leader of the presidential candidate’s campaign team.
Kwamena Ahwoi concludes his fabricated and deluded narrative about “The Campaign Team and the Campaign Strategy” with an ex post facto praise by President J. A. Kufuor for President Mills for standing up to Rawlings when he later became President in 2009 as though that sufficiently excuses the failure of Professor Mills puppet masters to manage his 2000 presidential campaign in an experienced and more professional manner. The type of justification and argumentation the author of Working with Rawlings deployed on the doomed 2000 presidential election shows the very poor quality and caliber of any person, particularly when he presents himself as a Professor of Law and a scholar writing a memoire of his experiences based on verifiable researched data.
PROFESSOR MILLS: FIRST TIME UNLUCKY
Kwamena Ahwoi in his narrative on the defeat of Professor Mills and myself in the 2000 elections continued with his distortion of the facts to hide the truth and deny any responsibility on the part of his colleague puppet masters and him for the abysmal failure of that enterprise. The author says without any equivocation that: “The defeat of Professor Mills and the NDC in the 2000 elections did not come as a surprise.” The question is, if the defeat was anticipated, then why did Kwamena Ahwoi and his team of puppet masters goad Professor Mills to accept the offer to be the 2000 presidential candidate for the NDC? Was it so that they could contest President Rawlings claim to the leadership of the NDC when he had ceased to be President of Ghana? Professor Mills might have fought a good fight, but the odds were against him because Kwamena Ahwoi and his cohort of puppeteers doomed his campaign to certain defeat. The percentages of the overall national 2000 election results used by Kwamena Ahwoi in Working with Rawlings enabled him to contend unethically that: “It was clear that the country was tired of Jerry Rawlings and the NDC and wanted change no matter what” and to camouflage the disastrous failure of Professor Mills, Kwamena Ahwoi and his Ahwoi siblings, Kofi Totobi-Quakyi, Nana Ato Dadzie, Daniel Ohene Agyekum, Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang and the like of puppeteers to deliver their own regions to the NDC at the 2000 presidential election.
Professor Mills, Nana Ato Dadzie, the Ahwoi siblings, Kofi Totobi-Quakyi, and Naana Opoku Agyemang hail from the Central and Western Regions where the NDC got only 38.8% against the NPP’s 60.4% for the Central Region, and 37.5% for the NDC against the NPP’s 62.5% in the Western Region in the run-off between Professor Mills and Mr. Kufuor. In the Volta Region where President Rawlings and Dr. Obed Asamoah hail from, the NDC got 89.2% of the votes against the NPP’s 10.8% in the same run-off. The northern sector percentages were: Northern Region, NDC, 51.5% against NPP’s 48.6%; Upper East Region, NDC 58.4% against NPP’s 41.6%; and Upper West Region, NDC 62.0% against NPP’s 38.0%. Daniel Ohene Agyekum’s Ashanti Region which is where the Ahwois boast as a home gave the NDC 19.5% against NPP’s 80.5%. Professor Mills’ wife hails from the Greater Accra Region where the NDC got 39.6% of the votes against NPP’s 60.4%. Mr. Kufuor’s wife hails from the Brong-Ahafo Region which delivered 40.4% for the NDC against 59.7% for the NPP.
The foregoing statistical data demonstrates beyond every doubt that President Rawlings, Dr. Obed Asamoah, and Martin Amidu, the running mate for the 2000 elections delivered their regions resoundingly to the NDC while professor Mills and his cohort of talkative-only puppet masters doomed his election defeat by failing to deliver their regions to the NDC. The saying is that “monkey no fine but heem mother lakam” so how does the monkey blame others for its abysmal defeat when its own mother voted against and rejected it at the polls? This scenario repeated itself in 2004 presidential election. In 2008 the saving grace was President Rawlings tenacity throughout the run-off campaign and in particular at the last Tain Constituency elections.
CONCLUSIONS
This concluding critique has demonstrated that Professor Mills’ campaign team, and the campaign strategy for the 2000 presidential election were doomed from the inception by the incompetence of Kawmena Ahwoi and his cohort of puppeteers. It has been shown that Kwamena Ahwoi and his co-puppeteers had unchallenged influence on the campaign process through their absolute control of Professor Mills in the decisions of the NDC on the nature of the NDC Campaign Team and the Campaign Strategy for the 2000 presidential election.
Professor Mills and his cohort of puppet masters led by Kwamena Ahwoi could not even deliver the votes from their regions to the NDC as against the massive percentages of votes delivered by President Rawlings, Dr. Obed Asamoah, and the running mate, Martin Amidu from their respective regions. Consequently, Professor Mills and his puppet masters were substantially, if not exclusively, responsible for the abysmal failure of the NDC at the 2000 presidential election campaign. The results of the 2004 presidential election were also mirror images of the 2000 presidential election results. In 2008 the saving grace was President Rawlings tenacity throughout the run-off campaign and in particular at the last Tain Constituency election. Paradoxically, it gave the Ahwoi siblings 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.
EPILOGUE
The Toyota Landcruiser and two Nissan pick-up back-up vehicles that were assigned for my campaign after I became the running mate to Professor Mills were apparently Government vehicles. The Chairman of the Finance Committee of the NDC, Dr. Obed Asamoah, and the National Treasurer, Baba Kamara, had failed or refused to purchase vehicles for the running mate to use for the campaign despite having been asked by the party to do so. Nana Ato Dadzie, the Chief of Staff recalled the Toyota Landcruiser and two Nissan pick-up vehicles the working day following the second round of the 2000 presidential election when I had returned to Accra from voting in Bawku in the Upper East Region. I was thus completely grounded in my ability to visit the electorate to say thank you to them for their votes and had to depend on the generosity of well-wishers to do so.
So, it came to pass that under the Chairmanship of Dr. Obed Asamoah, the NDC passed a resolution deciding that the next running mate to the presidential candidate must not only be a Northerner but also a Muslim. I was not invited to, and I was not at that NDC Congress. I did not care about the decision arrived at under the Chairmanship of Dr. Obed Asamoah at Kumasi because I had never been interested in being the running mate or the Vice President of Ghana though I knew the machinations and meetings that took place at the swimming pool in Mr. Eddie Annan’s residence between Paa Kwasi Amissah-Arthur, Alhaji Baba Karama, who was still the National Treasurer of the NDC, and Professor Mills that resulted in Dr. Asamoah being persuaded to go along with the agreement reached at Eddie Annan’s residence’s swimming pool to change the rules for a northern Muslim running mate.
Professor Mills had initially refused to accede to promising to make Baba Kamara the National Treasurer his running mate at the 2004 presidential election because he had no explanation to offer to me after he had assured me on three different occasions that we would run again. The strategy was devised by the two interlocutors to get Dr. Asamoah to change the requirements for the next running mate not only to be a northerner but also a Muslim to give Professor Mills a reason to choose one of the interlocutors, a Muslim, as his next running mate.
President Rawlings had earlier suggested to Professor Mills to nominate John Dramani Mahama as his running mate for the 2004 presidential election, but Professor Mills refused on the grounds that he could not explain his decision to me as I had done nothing to warrant his changing me for another person. I had notice of President Rawlings’ intentions before he engaged Professor Mills on the matter from Victor Smith who had told me on a visit to President Rawlings’ office that his wife and him were thinking of Mr. Dramani as the next running mate. I suspected that President Rawlings had deliberately asked Victor Smith to broach that topic with me and see my reaction. This matter eventually surfaced in the media (particularly in The Chronicle) with the contention that the National Chief Iman did not have any objection to the next running mate not being a Muslim.
Dr. Tony Aidoo may recollect President Rawlings’ anger when the NDC supporters nicknamed “64” from Tamale rang President Rawlings in London registering their opposition to the information that Professor Mills intended to choose Baba Kamara as his next running mate for the 2004 presidential election. Rawlings after his conversation with the NDC 64 boys turned to Dr. Tony Aidoo and me visibly angry and asked us whether we had heard that Professor Mills intended to nominate Baba Kamara as his running mate. Dr. Tony Aidoo and I who had travelled on the same flight to London at the invitation of President Rawlings with return tickets provided by Victor Smith as Rawlings’ Secretary, answered in the negative. Jerry, then told us that Baba Kamara would be Professor Mills’ running mate over his dead body.
But, as all was said and done, Jerry John Rawlings who preferred John Dramani Mahama but could not have his way objected to Baba Kamara as Professor Mills’ running mate unless it was over his dead body, and this time had his way. Professor Mills had instead to nominate Muhammad Mumuni, a Muslim, as his running mate for the 2004 presidential election in fulfillment of the new NDC rules to the annoyance and disappointment of the two interlocutors who got Dr. Asamoah to change the rules to favour one of them after securing a firm promise and fulfilling their side of the bargain by delivering the agreed human and material resources to the Mills team in consummation of the Eddie Annan swimming pool contract. I abridged this narrative on grounds of discretion, but its residues continued to affect and still affects the dynamics within the NDC even after the passing of Professor Mills.
Professor Mills was unable to man-up and to inform me that he had nominated a running mate for the 2004 presidential election. On Thursday, 23 September 2004 I coincidentally passed by to see Alhaji Mahama Iddrisu on my way to my law office. Alhaji Iddrisu told me at about 10:00 am that Professor Mills just left there 40 minutes previously and came to inform him that he had nominated Muhammad Mumuni as his running mate for the 2004 election. He also told Alhaji Iddrisu that Jerry was insisting on John Mahama as the running mate, but he refused to accede to that. He informed Alhaji Iddrisu that he was on his way to the NEC meeting to announce the nomination. I was hearing about the nomination for the first time and took it in my own stride and continued to my office to attend to my own business.
In the circumstances, I was not at the Cape Coast NDC Congress on Saturday, 25 September 2004 to even endorse the new running mate to show unity in the ranks. Always, the strategist and tactician, former President Rawlings called me around 8:10 pm the same day to enquire why I was not with them at the Cape Coast rally. I took the line of least resistance and told him that I had problems with my VW Passat car which was the only vehicle I had.
It is important for the reader to remember that without Jerry John Rawlings risking his life to stage the 31 December Revolution most of the PNDC appointees including those who became double agents between Rawlings and Mills would have been relatively unknown to the political history of this country. Whatever they claim to have become and achieved was owed to the judgment or misjudgment of Jerry John Rawlings as Chairman of the PNDC in appointing them to public office. As President Rawlings neared the end of his tenure vaulting ambition overtook the place of loyalty as is common with double agents. When the NDC lost the 2000 presidential election vaulting ambition turned into treachery against Rawlings who had brought them up the political ladder in favour of their kinsman, Professor Mills.
Chairman Rawlings had repeated ad nauseam at meetings of the PNDC, PNDC Committee of Secretaries, and Joint PNDC Committee of Secretaries and CDR Regional Organizers, that what he feared most was the traitor within rather than the enemy, whom he knew and respected. Consequently, upon identifying the traitors within when they showed their true colours after he had completed his tenure as President, he attempted to confront them. The relationship between him and the Ahwoi brothers whom he trusted, and considered his comrades when he was PNDC Chairman, and later as President took the turn of a very destructive conflict interaction. This culminated on the afternoon of Monday, 15 October 2018 in a tweet in reaction to an alleged conspiracy for the political support of the Ahwoi brothers in exchange for former President John Mahama making one of the Ahwoi brothers his running in the 2020 presidential election should he win the race to be the flagbearer of the NDC.
Rawlings’ opposition to the conspiracy to enthrone one of the Ahwoi brothers as running mate for the 2020 presidential elections eventually led to a compromise to offer the position to a surrogate of the Ahwoi brothers as a decoy to the original plan. The point ought not to be missed by the discerning reader that this surrogate, Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, who became the NDC running mate for the 2020 election, turned out to be writer of the foreword, an editor, and a reviewer of Kwamena Ahwoi’s Working with Rawlings which was published in 2020 and publicly launched on 15 July 2020. Jerry John Rawlings used the proverbial clean shaving blade in giving the Ahwoi brothers and their cohort of puppet masters of Professor Mills decent haircuts when he was the Chairman of the PNDC and later President of Ghana. When he ended his tenure of political power, they appreciated his kindness by using broken bottles to give him bloody haircuts in return.
The Ahwois and their cohorts had nursed their vaulting ambition to supplant Jerry John Rawlings’ role, and influence as the leader of the 31 December Revolution and the founder of the NDC. Working with Rawlings was to re-write the history of the PNDC and NDC to contribute to that traitorous enterprise. The traitorous scheme continues to manifest in their unquenching maneouvres to control and dictate the future of the NDC now that Jerry John Rawlings has also been silenced by death. The Ahwois and their colleague puppeteers continue to advocate for their surrogate to be the running mate for the 2024 presidential election. It portends disaster for the future of the NDC as political party in Ghana should these double agents be allowed to achieve their vaulting ambitions. This is part of the untold story of underpinning Kwamena Ahwoi’s Working with Rawlings.
Martin A. B. K. Amidu
1 June 2023