General News of Saturday, 31 December 2016
Source: citifmonline.com
Former President Jerry John Rawlings
Ex-President John Rawlings has accused government officials of causing the defeat of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the just ended general elections.
He believes though there were clear signs ahead of the general polls that the NDC would lose the elections, it ignored the signs on the wall and failed to act.
According to him, the NDC lost the elections way before December 7 because it chose to “persistently and unrepentantly stay on the slippery slope despite the warning lights right” in its face.
Flt Lt. Rawlings who made the assertion when he addressed a ceremony to mark the 35th anniversary of the 31st December revolution at the Revolution Square in Accra on Saturday, said:“I don’t think I was the only one who saw the writing on the wall. Many people from our very own party I believe could see the writing on the wall that we were going to lose this past election.
“It was obvious a long time ago that we wouldn’t make it. Our general negativity, impunity, disrespect and corruption was taking us further and further downhill. About the time when most were living in the painful reality with stress and anger, that’s when some of us chose to be more impervious to reality. We had lost so much goodwill,”he added.
President Rawlings added that some handlers and manipulators who have benefited from the past two governments have failed to admit the reasons for the party’s election failure instead of facing up to the reality of history and performance.
“I believe that this time around our people have seen through it and we would embark on the right steps to regain our moral high ground. The moral high ground that we have abandoned and on which the new leader [Nana Akufo Addo) is now standing.”
President John Mahama was defeated by the New Patriotic Party’s Nana Akufo-Addo in the December 7 elections, in what many have described as the worst performance put up by a sitting President in an election.
The NPP Flagbearer finally secured the presidency after a third time, beating the incumbent, President John Mahama with 53.85 percent of valid votes cast. Nana Akufo-Addo rode on the back of the valid votes cast to become Ghana’s fifth president under the fourth Republic.
President Mahama, who ran on the ticket of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), secured 44.40 of valid votes cast.
The party in a bid to investigate the cause of the party’s historic defeat formed a 13-member committee chaired by a Former Minister of Finance and Chairman of the National Development Planning Commission, Kwesi Botchwey.
