Konadu Quits NDC?

Published in Daily Guide on September 25, 2012

By Charles Takyi-Boadu

 

Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings

Barring any unforeseen circumstances, former First Lady Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings is expected to renounce her membership of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) any moment from today.
This would enable her to respond to calls for her to contest for the flagbearership position of the newly formed National Democratic Party (NDP), most of whose supporters are disgruntled members of the NDC.
Dr Nii Armah Josiah Aryeh, interim National Chairman of the NDP, dropped the hint when he announced the extension of the filing of nominations for the party’s presidential candidature.
Dr Aryeh told Joy FM yesterday that even though NDP members were calling on the former First Lady to contest for the party’s flagbearership, she could not do so because she was still a member of the NDC, expressing the hope that she might quit the ruling party by the close of the week.
Sources close to Mrs. Rawlings, whose husband, former President Jerry John Rawlings, is the founder of the ruling party, told DAILY GUIDE that the only thing left was for her was to communicate her decision to the leadership of the NDC.
That, according to sources, was part of reasons the interim national executive of the NDP had to postpone its congress and launch to enable Nana Konadu and other potential aspirants to file their nominations.
She is said to have already received the blessings of her husband who is equally not happy with developments in the party he founded and also fought tooth and nail to return it to power after eight years in opposition.
The Interim National Chairman of NDP, a former General Secretary of the ruling NDC, Dr. Aryeh, who spoke on the issue, said, “The former First Lady now remains a member of the NDC. She has not and I stand to be corrected; she has not publicly resigned her position but if she resigns, then of course like anybody else, she could join us.”
According to Dr Aryeh, who spoke on Accra-based Citi FM, the party initially planned to close nominations tomorrow and hold congress on Saturday, September 29.
“We have taken a second look and decided that congress should be on the 6th of October,” he stated, indicating that the rescheduling of the congress was due to the flagbearership contest.
For this reason, he said the closure of nominations had been extended.
$5m Handshake
Nana Konadu dismissed media reports claiming she had demanded $5million from the NDC to abandon plans to lead the NDP into the 2012 general elections.
Mrs Rawlings insisted she had not had any discussion with anybody from the NDC about rumours circulating that she was set to lead the NDP against the party her husband founded, let alone haggling over how much would be enough to change her mind.
The pro NDC Al-Hajj newspaper edited by Alhaji Bature Iddrisu reported last Thursday that the former First Lady had demanded $5million from the NDC if she was to be persuaded to step down as a possible flagbearer for the NDP.
The newspaper claimed Nana Konadu made those demands when mediators from the NDC impressed upon her to drop her ambition of contesting the crucial elections, a scenario which could split NDC votes.
Nana Konadu, who was the special guest of honour at the 6th anniversary celebration of the Women Encounter Fellowship International in Tema, said the speculations would not deter her from achieving the purpose for which God created her.
“Before coming here, I had to go and meet a certain gentleman who is writing some articles for me. And then he asked me ‘Oh, there’s this about you going to collect $5m so that you keep your mouth shut. I said what are you talking about? Then he said ‘let me get the paper from my car.’ He went and picked the paper from his car.
“It was sad for me. They write things that I do not even recognise myself in the papers.
Nobody has spoken to me about anything like that. I haven’t told anybody about anything like that. But the man (author of the story) was emphatic. He wants to destroy the purpose for which God has brought me onto this earth, and I will not agree to it,” she declared to a loud applause. Meanwhile, pressure is mounting on Nana Konadu to respond to the overtures of her Friends of Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings (FONKAR) and become the flag bearer of the NDP.
In an interview yesterday, FONKAR Operations Director Owusu Bempah was optimistic the lady would be so overwhelmed by both the internal and external overtures that she would have no option than to succumb to the popular wish of her admirers.
The silence of the former First Lady has been a source of concern to political pundits who are unable to decrypt the conundrum surrounding her future, a situation worsened by her husband’s presence at the NDC conference in Kumasi.
The NDC last week dared the former First Lady to declare her position without further ado, as to whether she was going to maintain her membership of the party or change her status and join the party she is rumoured as being behind.
Owusu Bempah told DAILY GUIDE, “We shall be there and the country, we are optimistic, would be treated to a major political development when the former First Lady would break ranks with the NDC and take up the leadership of the NDP. We are still entreating her to consider our demand.”
She has of late been active in Kumasi in what political observers think has to do with her political future and the country’s.

RAWLINGSES HIT ROAD By Charles Takyi-Boadu Posted in Daily Guide on Friday, September 21, 2012 Related Stories At the time leading members of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) were jubilating over a supposed endorsement of President John Mahama by former President Jerry John Rawlings, the wife of the NDC founder,... ...Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, was busy meeting members of the newly formed National Democratic Party (NDP) in Kumasi. Mrs. Rawlings arrived in the Ashanti regional capital on Sunday, hours after leaving the Legends and Legacy Ball held at the International Conference Centre on Saturday evening where she dropped hints of her intentions to run for the flagbearership position of the NDP. Her husband, reports said, was also on his way to the Ashanti Region to throw his weight behind his wife who has been tipped by the leadership of the new party to lead them for the December 2012 polls. Mr Rawlings is worried about the growing corruption in the ruling government. According to him, the practice was so deep that it had literally held the resources of the country to ransom by a handful of people while the majority of the people suffered. “The corruption that is going on is so deep. Some aspects of these corruptions are literally holding your national resources to ransom by just a handful of people. I’m not here to poison your minds at all,” he told Volta chiefs at a meeting in Ho on Wednesday. Information gathered by DAILY GUIDE and corroborated by the NDP youth leader in the Ashanti Region, Thomas Andy Owusu, indicated that upon arrival in Kumasi, Mrs. Rawlings first met interim executives of the NDP in the region at an undisclosed location. That, according to the source, was to enable her to know at firsthand the level of progress that had been made on the grounds and to strategise for the way forward. Among the several places she visited were Mampong, Ejisu Juaben, Effiduase and Kumawu where she met members of the party. The NDC breakaway party is said to have opened offices across the region considered the heartbeat of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP). Everywhere she went, she was said to have gone to greet the chiefs and people of the area and was given a rousing welcome. According to Andy Owusu, initial attempts to get the Prempeh Assembly Hall proved futile since they were frustrated by the authorities in charge. They were compelled by circumstance to rent the SSNIT Hall where Mrs. Rawlings addressed party faithful in the region. Owusu indicated that what was scheduled to be a meeting between Mrs. Rawlings, who is also the president of the 31st December Women’s Movement (DWM), and party executives virtually turned into a rally of a sort since supporters of the NDP besieged the SSNIT Hall where the event was taking place. The hall, which is estimated to have a seating capacity of about 300, was said to have been filled to capacity to the extent that Mrs. Rawlings had to struggle for passage to the rostrum in order to address the gathering. Coming Events Nana Konadu was said to have told the gathering that at the time she was talking, her husband, the founder of the ruling NDC, was also in the Volta Region organising people to join the NDP and that when she left Kumasi, Mr. Rawlings would also visit the region in the coming days to assess things for himself. An obviously elated Nana Konadu was said to have promised them that the NDP would be launched in Kumasi since she was stunned by the structures the party executives had put in place. Meanwhile, Operations Director of the Friends of Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings (FONKAR) Ernest Owusu Bempah has dismissed claims that Mr. Rawlings had endorsed President John Mahama. The loud-mouth FONKAR chief, who spoke to myjoyonline, said the ‘old man’ had not changed his perception about the ruling administration hence he could not have endorsed the NDC flagbearer. The spokesman for Mr Rawlings, Kofi Adams, who also spoke on the subject, indicated that though President Mahama had brought a new lease of life into the ruling NDC, Mr. Rawlings was yet to decide whether or not to join its campaign. Mr Adams told Joy FM that it was only the campaign team of the president that could persuade his boss to join the campaign trail.

NDC Blows $1m On Enemies

Published in Daily Guide on September 24, 2012

By Charles Takyi-Boadu

 

President John Mahama

The ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) appears to have spent over $1million of the taxpayers’ money on hounding political opponents.
The money included an amount of $686,000 given to a supposed ‘Professional Group’ aligned to the NDC, contracted by the Mills/Mahama administration, to hound perceived ‘enemies’ of the government for their roles in the Ghana@50 celebrations.
This was after a High Court discharged the two members of the previous New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration, Kwadwo Okyere Mpiani and Dr Charles Wereko-Brobby, on charges of willfully causing financial loss to the state, an action brought against them by the state.
A letter from the desk of deputy Attorney General and Minister of Justice Ebo Barton-Odro to the Finance Ministry, is calling for the payment of the money to the shadowy NDC group.
Apart from the actual contract sum which was $70,000, the group was also paid a daily allowance of $2,000, bringing payment to $686,000.
The group’s membership is not known but it is believed to be made up of NDC members of which one was recently elected to stand as a parliamentary candidate for the ruling party in the Volta Region, after defeating a minister of state and incumbent MP.
Comprising NDC lawyers assembled by the Attorney General, they were paid the sum to enable them to look for enough grounds to specifically prosecute former Chief of Staff, Kwadwo Okyere Mpiani who was Chairman of the Ghana@50 celebrations and Dr Charles Wereko-Brobby, Chief Executive Officer (CEO).
A letter dated April 26, 2012 and authored by a Deputy Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Ebo Barton-Odro, who has been at the center of payments of a number of controversial judgment debts, is authorizing payment from the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning. The letter stated that the payment was in “respect to services rendered in the provision and procurement of Jubilee toilets and sampled souvenirs for the Ghana@50 celebrations.”
It is this same ‘Professional Group’ whose dealings with the state are shrouded in secrecy that was paid a whopping $300,000 for a similar investigation into the infamous Isofoton case which also ended up in a mirage. Its advice to the state on the matter was ignored and payments effected courtesy of Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, a deputy Minister of Information, who lobbied for the Spanish company to get payments for alleged wrong abrogation of contracts.
Before they could even submit their final report on the Isofoton case, the office of the Attorney General had issued instructions for payments to be made to the company as judgment debt.
The contract agreement dated October 7, 2010 and entered between the state, represented by Barton-Odro, and one E. D. Manful, described as Managing Consultant, and witnessed by one Elikplim Agbemava, a lawyer at the Ministry of Justice and Mercy Akyeampon, a Secretary to the ‘Professional Group’, stated among others, things that  “the client (state) shall provide to the consultant (Profession Group) such as a list of cases to be periodically investigated by the consultant, with timelines for completion as agreed between both parties.”
Apart from that, the Professional Group was also required to provide the state all “reasonable support as may be deemed necessary for reasons of confidentiality, security, expeditious dispatch of assignments, legal requirement, and propriety.”
For the sake of secrecy, it was also required to, as it were, “handover to the client (state) all reports prepared in the course of each assignment and shall not keep any working papers and reports relating to the assignments on account of confidentiality and sensitivity but shall turn such materials over to the client.”