Comrade Jerry John Rawlings, I salute you and you will continue to live in our hearts amidst the culture of silence in Ghana today. Every day I look beyond the horizon and wonder, when will salvation come to Ghanaians again under the 1992 Constitution you birthed? Say hi to Arikpo (GP. Captain Richard Forjeo (rtd.)), who followed you to eternity at the beginning of 2022. You are deeply missed and most fondly remembered.

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. 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.

The 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?

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. The author ended up conveying a picture of Professor Mills as not being his own man. Kwamena Ahwoi was, therefore, solely responsible for the derogatory words – “Mills-Rawlings’ Poodle” and “Vote Mills, Ge JJ free” - that the opponents of the NDC used to describe Professor Mills after his acceptance speech at his Ho coronation.

The author, Kwamena Ahwoi, tried to use Working with Rawlings to re-write the history of the events of the period to distance his cohort of puppet masters and him from the decision by the NDC to endorse and acclaim Professor Mills as the NDC’s presidential candidate for the 2000 election. Consequently, he constructed his narrative of the events in such a manner as to make his cohort of puppet masters of Professor Mills and he to emerge the heroes of those two difficult years while President Rawlings’ wife and Rawlings together with others were cast as the villains.

President Rawlings had only one term left if he won the 1996 election, which the NDC was confident he was going to win whosoever became his running mate. The transition to an NDC Government in the future without Rawlings began with the nomination of Professor Mills as Rawlings’ running mate. The Ahwois hedged their bets as the main pillars behind Professor Mills’ Vice Presidency and his future. Rawlings’ trust in his comrades blinded him from seeing the double agency in the behaviour of the Ahwois. The “Ahwoi Capture” of Professor Mills that will affect and influence the future relationship between President Rawlings and Professor Mills had begun.

A content analysis of the author’s chapter 4 reveals he had to doctor facts and available data to conclude that before the NCD submitted its “Evolving a True Democracy” report to the PNDC “no options were foreclosed”: “The foreclosure only came with the presentation of the NCD report to the PNDC which came down cautiously in favour of multi-party democracy”. Without inversing the facts and straining old data contained in a 4th March 1985 press statement to establish a lack of foreclosure in spite of the PNDC Chairman’s January 1991 New Year broadcast to the Nation, the author could not claim credit for his ingenious role in guiding the PNDC to the path of multi-party democracy in Ghana

Our late Comrade and President Rawlings, the people of this country whom you loved so much and died for have been led into an economic mess, suffering, and poverty which is worse than what led you to risk your life to save this country and give it a viable constitution that has lasted for three decades.

There is no Ghanaian Head of Government or Head of State who can compare with the late Comrade Chairman, and President Emeritus Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawling in terms of the exhibition of the highest degree of integrity and honour in the management of the public affair of this country for the common good of its ordinary citizens since independence on 6th March 1957, except the Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. It will take this country a long time for another President who understands the ordinary Ghanaian psyche and empathizes truly with his compatriots to emerge to salvage our decaying democratic situation under the Constitution.

The handing over of power by an African leader after two four-year terms under a Constitutional regime in Africa which you accomplished is a notable event in the political history of Ghana and Africa. Not all who have been Presidents or Heads of State have been of equal merit, or of at least equal importance. Presidents or Heads of State, like other men, vary in their importance on their generations and history. Some even in their lifetime never raised a ripple on the surface of politics and whose names are now forgotten by all but students of their period…

Okudzeto Ablakwa is the person whom while claiming to be entitled to the title Honourable Deputy Minister at age 28 years without having done any public service in his life has made himself notorious for insulting everybody old enough to be his father and other elders including former President Rawlings and former President Kuffuor. When a child is cursed by a father who brought him up from age three because of disrespect and insults to him the child grows up to become the type of Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa: with sharp teeth, both figuratively and physically and a scourge on all elders of the whole Ghanaian society except those who feed his greedy political stomach.