To avoid being questioned on the controversial ‘Working with Rawlings’ book, authored by Professor Kwamena Ahwoi, former President John Dramani Mahama last week dodged media personnel in the Volta Region after an initial plan to meet them, the Daily Statesman has been reliably informed.
The former President, as part of his campaign tour to the region, had arranged to meet with journalists there.
In an invitation letter to the Volta Regional Chapter of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), dated August 13 and signed by James Gunu, Regional Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), the party requested the journalists to meet the former President at the Regional Press Centre, in Ho, on Wednesday at 7:00pm.
Humiliation
Journalists from all part of the region travelled to the regional capital for the meeting.
After several hours of waiting for the former President, they were told to move to Serene Hotel for the meeting. However, upon reaching the hotel, staff of the place told them no such meeting had been scheduled to occur there at that time.
A management member of the hotel who felt the presence of the journalists at the place was becoming a nuisance sacked them while using unprintable words on them.
Embarrassed, the leaders of the GJA asked their colleagues to move back to the press centre.
The journalists sat at the press centre till deep in the night without the former President making an appearance. Later, he was seen with his entourage moving out of town without any of his team going to say anything the journalists.
However, later around 10pm, the Volta Regional Vice-Chairman of the NDC, George Loh, met with the journalists to inform them about the former President’s inability to them.
Dodging questions on Ahwoi’s book
According to sources within the NDC, the former President dodged the journalists because he had got hint that they were going to ask him about Ahwoi’s controversial book, especially why he had remained silent on what many in the NDC see as attacks of the party’s founder, former President Jerry John Rawlings.
Mr Mahama is captured in the book to have stated that the unfair treatment meted out to the late President John Evans Atta Mills by Mr Rawlings affected him (Mills) psychologically.
He is also said to have claimed that former President Rawlings deliberately launched ‘unfair’ incessant attacks on the late President for no reason except on ‘suspicions’.
According to Prof Ahwoi, in his controversial book which has been described by Special Prosecutor Martin Amidu as containing ‘irredeemable lies’, “President John Dramani Mahama felt that the incessant attacks that President Rawlings launched against President Mills were unfair. He traced the cause of the attacks to President Mills’ failure to prosecute members of the previous Kufuor administration”.
The book adds: “John Mahama said President Mills used to complain to him about President Rawlings’ attacks and he had no doubt that the attacks affected President Mills psychologically.”
According to sources, because some people mentioned in the book have distanced themselves from the contents attributed to them, many NDC members in the Volta Region are angry over Mr Mahama’s silence on the attacks against Mr Rawlings.
This, according to sources, are the reasons why the former President had to dodge the journalists, having being hinted that they were going to ask him about the contents of the book whose foreword was written by his running mate, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, and described by her as “an account honestly delivered”.
The source says the media were not only going to ask about his views on the contents alone but his response to the specific statements attributed to him, which many think is an attack on the party’s founder.
Meanwhile, the Volta Regional GJA has written to the national leadership of the NDC to express its displeasure at the ill-treatment meted out to its members.
Source: Daily Statesman
