Posted: Daily Guide |www.dailyguideghana.com
Saturday, 28 August 2010
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
Kofi Adams, Deputy General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) who doubles as spokesman for the party’s founder, Jerry John Rawlings, has confirmed fears and speculations of political observers of the polarization of the ruling party.
According to Adams, the utterances of some individuals and groups in the party had led to the situation where they had been branded as belonging to either the Rawlings or Mills camp.
What bothers him most is the fact that those perceived as belonging to the Rawlings camp are often described as the ‘enemies within’, saying “I don’t think people who associate with the founder of the party are enemies of this government.”
Speaking on Accra-based X.FM yesterday, Kofi Adams did not understand why certain individuals and groups in the NDC misconstrued Mr. Rawlings as working against the party and the government which he so much toiled to bring to power.
He said “call any of our regional executive members, and if they will want to be truthful, that when they were running campaigns in terms of the presence of national leadership in their regions, if they were marking the amount of time spent campaigning, whether any national officer can match what the former president did.”
Some key and influential members of the NDC are not happy about Mr. Rawlings’s criticism of President Mills and the style of his administration but have not been courageous enough to say it in the open.
They believe his utterances would eventually affect the party, especially in the 2012 general elections, but his spokesman said those who haboured such weird perceptions about the former president must disabuse their minds and rather take his criticisms in good faith and make amends for the betterment of the NDC since he has no ill-intentions about the party.
Mr. Adams was responding to a question as to whether there was indeed seeping cracks and factionalism in the NDC as had been suggested in various circles.
He expressed gratitude to “the young men out there who still see and identify with the founder of the party and do not see themselves as enemies of the NDC.”
He stated that no political organization or institution including the NDC could do without factionalism. He therefore called on members of the party, especially those in influential positions, to embrace dissenting views to strengthen the party.
“These factions can be used positively; they must not be used to destroy the organization,” he said, noting that such perceptions contributed to the downfall of the party.