SHADOW BOXING @ NDC CONGRESS
… Unabashed JJ attacks Haruna, Mosquito et tal
Posted: The Chronicle |Monday, January 18, 2009
By Charles Takyi - Boadu
Characteristic of him, former President Rawlings last Saturday took the opportunity granted him, at the just-ended National Democratic Congress (NDC) National Delegates’ Congress in Tamale, to launch blistering attacks on some leading members of the party.
First to appear in the crosshairs of the gun-sight was Haruna Iddrisu, whose description of his military rule as “authoritarian and dictatorial” did not go down well with the former military dictator.
“Some people were just ten years old and did not know what happened,” he told his audience, and went ahead to explain how his wife was nearly crashed to death, when she was carrying a seven month old pregnancy during a civilian rule.
He claimed a Member of Council of State, who is a Gonja Chief, was behind the attack that nearly caused the life of his wife. Digressing from his prepared text, the former president then turned the heat on the leadership of the party for failing to provide mattresses for the delegates
to sleep on, as they would have done during funerals of departed colleagues.
He did not end there, but went further to launch what appears to be attack on Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, the re-elected General Secretary of the party, who had previously spoken against the role of the 31st December Women’s Movement, founded by his wife, in the party.
According to him, when his wife was moving from one place to other trying to establish the movement, the wives of some of the people were doing pedicure and manicure, and yet they have now turned round to attack her.
Atta the mortuary attendant
Just when everybody at the packed-to-capacity West African Examinations Council (WAEC) Hall, the venue of the congress, thought he had finished his ‘assassination’ agenda, Mr. Rawlings bowed his head as if he was reading something on paper, raised his head, and told his audience that he had a story to tell.
With the delegates, including those at the high table, listening with rapt attention, the NDC Founder decided to tell a story about a mortuary attendant at the 37 Military Hospital in Accra, called Atta.
In a long winding and sarcastic tale, he narrated that Atta was always drunk due to the nature of his work - attending to corpses at the morgue. Atta was also a heavy smoker, who he occasionally met and gave out a few notes of money to. He then cast his mind back to a teacher who happened to be a member of the NDC who died years ago at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital.
When his wife, Nana Konadu and her colleagues went to visit the corpse, he said they noticed that the body had virtually been dumped into the coffin unprepared.
According to him, they therefore took a decision to help prepare and dress the corpse before it was finally flown to the United States. He made this narration to enable the delegates, who through, what he described as determination, had to sacrifice and sleep on hard tables, to understand the difficulties in politics.
“I am saying this, because I in guess situations like this, if you do not tip the mortuary attendant, you will not get your face powdered, you will not get your hair combed properly, so that you’ll look dignified in the box,” he said.
One day, somewhere during his second term in office as a democratically elected president, Mr. Rawlings said he met this Atta friend at the 37 Military Hospital where he worked, looking sinewy and very dry, with his eyes looking red, always smoking and smelling of alcohol. Sometime later, he claimed to have gone to visit this same Atta, and saw him completely transformed, “looking so good, there was meat on his skin and his eyes were no longer red.”
Obviously surprised at his sight, Mr. Rawlings said he was compelled to ask this same Atta, the mortuary attendant, the secret to his new look, “and he said he had quit drinking and smoking.”
At the time, the former president confessed to being a heavy smoker too, but was somehow able to gain some strength from this mortuary attendant that “if he can stop smoking, and I was doing three packets a day, I could also stop smoking.”
Since the story had no link with his address, some of the delegates became agitated, especially those at the high table including the sitting President himself, who bears the name ‘Atta’, his Vice, John Dramani Mahama, party Chairman, Dr. Kwabena Adjei, party stalwart, Alhaji Mahama Iddrisu, and the Majority Leader in Parliament, Alban Bagbin, except for his wife, Nana Konadu, who was smiling.
Whilst admitting that some of the points made by Vice President, John Mahama, who had earlier delivered his speech, were quite valid, Mr. Rawlings said: “there is lot of pain on the chests of many of us,” stressing: “the country needs inspiration from us, can we provide, can we give that inspiration?” This, according to him, was because there was a painful truth out there, but could not tell as to whether they in the NDC would be courageous and bold enough to face those painful truths out there.
At this point, somebody in the crowd said in Twi, ‘ka ninyinaa’, literally meaning ‘say all’, and Rawlings responded ‘meka’, which translates “I’ll say it.” He therefore went on to unveil a catalogue of issues he has grappling with all this while, most of which had to do with leadership.
After delivering his prepared text, the former president revisited the issue of ‘Atta’, his mortuary attendant friend at the 37 Military Hospital.
This time, some of the delegates started murmuring, which made him say “no, this is a true story, one day you must go to visit the 37 Military Hospital and ask for Atta, “he’s a friend of mine, I know what am talking about.”
The clever rebuttal
But, after his long and winding narration of the story about Atta, President John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills also took the stage to address the delegates and candidates.
His first comment was that based on the story narrated by his Founder, he would consider dropping ‘Atta’ from his name, and cleverly moved away from the unsolicited attack into other issues raised by Mr. Rawlings.
After listening to him, the President: “if I have persevered with the NDC over the years, it is because of my determination to address the concerns which bother former president Rawlings.”
In confessing that he and his government had not been able to please everybody, President Mills expressed optimism over what he described as “a better tomorrow,” and therefore asked the doubting ‘ Thomases,’ especially the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), “that they should spare us their sanctimonious and self-serving effusions and statements.”
He said: “the country that we took over was certainly not a country which had seen eight years of ‘positive change,” saying “my brothers and sisters, we are certain that with unity, cohesion, with the singleness of purpose, there is nothing that we cannot achieve.”
Meanwhile, both Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings and Dr. Ekwow Spio Grabrah sailed through the keenly-contested election, to become vice chairperson and chairman respectively of the party. Dr. Kwabena Adjei and Johnson Asideu Nketiah, aka General Mosquito, also won landslide victories to retain their positions.
