Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie also known as Sir John, doesn’t understand why some party members keep vilifying him over his scathing, slanderous attacks against the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC).
Especially, when this same strategy, led by Asiedu Nketia, is being used successfully by the NDC.
Sir John therefore concludes that the position of General Secretary is not about gentility or speaking refined English, it is about matching the opponent boot for boot.
In a tape recording obtained by myjoyonline.com, Sir John is heard making a case for why he should be re-elected as General Secretary and not Kwabena Agyapong or Yaw Buaben Asamoah – his two main contenders.
Speaking to some party members, he catalogued a series of successful vituperative attacks launched by the NDC against the New Patriotic Party (NPP).
He said nobody could take on the NDC’s General Secretary Asiedu Nketia, when in 2007, he insulted 17 NPP flagbearer aspirants, calling them thieves without producing a single proof.
Yet Asiedu Nketia sued the Daily Guide newspaper Gh¢250,000 when the paper alleged he had built a house through corruption.
Again, he said, the NDC preserved the late President John Mill’s image in a “glass house” but launched a very painful campaign attacking the NPP’s Nana Addo – and it has worked for them.
“Why should the General Secretary of the NPP sit back and allow the NDC to run riot on his party?”, he said.
Sir John who almost landed in jail for contemptuous comments he made about some judges during the election petition hearing last year, said he felt sad knowing some NPP members were happy about his predicament.
In an over 40 minutes monologue, he said:
“People say General Secretary is not about talking on radio. Is today’s politics about guns? Is it about canes or cutlasses? Isn’t it about talk? It is because some people don’t have the ability to talk back, they envy those who can. Asiedu Nketia attacks us with words on radio and it hurts us or when is it that when I attack the NDC, some people complain that this is not the work of the General Secretary”.
“If I insult the NDC how does it affect John Kufuor? Why do we get hurt whenever Asiedu Nketia insults us and yet when I attack President [John] Mahama, some of you attack me for attacking him”
The job is not about finesse, English and gentility because you are General Secretary. “So if you don’t speak English and you come from the village then it means you can’t become General Secretary?”