According to E.T Mensah, the treatment meted out to the wife of the party’s founder, Jerry John Rawlings, was a contributing factor in the defeat that the party suffered in the December 2016 presidential and parliamentary polls.

Speaking on Accra-based 3FM, ET Mensah said, “the story must be told, people cherish what President Rawlings [did], especially the former first lady; and we should go and beg the former first lady. It was messy, we should go and beg the former first lady to come back.”

Mrs Rawlings left the party she was a founding member of in 2012 to form the National Democratic Party after an unsuccessful bid to unseat the then incumbent president John Evans Atta Mills to become the NDC’s leader.

Mr Rawlings himself, although not leaving the party, has taken a backseat and has in the past criticised the current crop of relatively young leaders for straying away from what he describes as the party’s founding values.

ET Mensah was locked in a bitter primary battle in which his protégé, Sam George dislodged him as the NDC’s candidate after two decades in Parliament and went on to win the seat without his support.

Credit : 3Newa