Mahama owes Rawlings an apology - Okudzeto

Europa

January 4, 2017 2:01 PM

Sam Okudzeto believes the outgoing President must use his last State of the Nation Address Thursday to say sorry to Mr Rawlings and the party for the election defeat after December 7.

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Former President of the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) has asked President John Mahama to render an apology to the founder of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Jerry John Rawlings for “alienating” him during his term in office.

“…Normally if you are leaving office, you may try to apologise to people you may have hurt or harmed … that’s one thing he should do. It is natural. You can never be in office without hurting people,” Mr Okudzeto said.

Mr Okudzeto believes Mr Mahama “alienated himself from him [Rawlings] and I think he needs to apologise for that because he was the founder of the party, no matter what happened nobody can deny that.”

“And he needed to be accorded that respect. But I think a lot of the young people around Mahama have been rude to [former] president Rawlings and I think that is something that he on behalf of those people should apologise to Rawlings for, that should be part of his address,” the veteran lawyer told Accra-based Joy FM.

Meanwhile, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has said that it will be not be prudent to respond to its founder, Jerry John Rawlings’ comments regarding the party’s defeat in the December 7 general elections.

Mr Rawlings at the 35th anniversary of the December 31 uprising said the NDC caused its own defeat.

“The NDC’s painful and massive rejection at the polls is indicative that we have lost the moral high ground that sets us apart from others. Great lengths were taken to draw the attention of the party as a collective but none of it will be tolerated or accommodated.”

“We lost the elections way before the 7th of December. We persistently and unrepentantly stayed on the slippery slope to the humiliating defeat despite the several warning lights right in our faces. My honest wish was for corrective measures to be taken to avert this electoral disaster,” he said.

But the NDC’s 2016 Campaign Coordinator and Organizing Secretary, Kofi Adams, said responding to the founder’s comments now is not the way to go since the party has already formed a committee to investigate the defeat.

Europa

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