The flagbearer of the NDC, former President John Mahama, is reported to have stated that the unfair treatment meted out to the late President John Evans Atta Mills by the founder of the NDC, Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings, affected him psychologically.
Mr Mahama is also said to have claimed further that former President Rawlings deliberately launched ‘unfair’ incessant attacks on the late President for no reason except on ‘suspicions’.
This is recorded by Professor Kwamena Ahwoi in his controversial book ‘Working with Rawlings’.
“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 claims in its page 199.
It 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.”
Many ways to kill a cat
But in spite of the claims that the attacks were occasioned by the failure to prosecute Kufuor’s appointees, it is on record that many of Kufuor’s appointees were tried by the Mills administration, with the NDC government losing almost all the cases.
The embarrassing legal defeats triggered the infamous “many ways to kill a cat” statement by the then National Chairman of the NDC, Dr Kwabena Agyei, who threatened to “cleanse the Judiciary”.
Among the critical cases were those involving Dr Charles Wereko-Brobby, former Chief Executive Officer of the defunct Ghana @50 Secretariat, and Kwadwo Mpiani, former Chief of Staff in the erstwhile Kufuor administration.
Dr Adjei’s accusation of the judiciary came after members of the NDC went on rampage and accused the then Attorney General of incompetence.
“Our party members are angry, but we take the leadership decisions and they listen to us. We tell them that they should be patient and leave the A-G alone and they will do just that. Laymen are different from lawyers so from their perspective, it is because the cases are being lost, they put the blame on the Attorney General,” Dr Kwabena Adjei stated at a press conference in August 2010.
Persecution of Kufuor’s appointees
Apart from the many court cases, some of Kufuor’s appointees were deliberately persecuted for no apparent reason.
For instance, in April 2009, soon after the Mills administration had taken power, a Toyota Land Cruiser belonging to Nana Akufo-Addo was snatched from a mechanic’s garage.
Some 15-months later, a black Toyota Land Cruiser V8 Series with registration number GE 4416 Z, which was his main campaign vehicle, was also snatched by a four-man security team directed from the Osu Castle, while the driver, Joseph Addo, was on a shopping errand at Opera Square, Accra.
As if that was not enough, some 14 containers laden with 24 cars and other valuable items, worth $163,000, imported from South Korea by a Kumasi-based private businessman, Dominic Akufo-Addo, were seized at the Tema Port in 2010 on the suspicion that the importer was a relative of Nana Akufo-Addo.
Matters got out of hand when the persecution of former Kufuor’s appointees led to the death of one Salisu Ahmed, a young NPP faithful. Salisu died as a result of beatings he received from police officers during a picket at the Bureau of National Investigations offices where supporters of the NPP went to solidarise with a detained former Information Minister, Stephen Asamoah Boateng.
