Bring back Konadu to NDC …Zanetor petitions party elders

NINE CLEAR years after former First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, resigned from the National Democratic Congress (NDC), ostensibly to become the presidential candidate of a rival political party, the National Democratic Party (NDC), calls have been made for the need to her to return to her originally party, NDC, of which she claims to be a pivotal founding member.

Though suggestions that Nana Konadu ought to rejoin the NDC has come up a couple of times over the past years, such talks have generally been in whispers behind closed doors until it was made official and public  last Friday November 12,  by none other but her own daughter, the NDC-Member of Parliament for the Klottey Korle Constituency Dr. Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings:

“…Let me say the thing that nobody wants to say. Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings is an integral part of this party. Let us do what we have to do to bring her back.

“In every family, there is conflict. But in every family, there are elders who will be part of the mediation of the conflict. We are calling on our elders. We don’t know what tomorrow holds. But if we want true victory, a convincing win, so that we can rescue the people of Ghana from where we are today, let us do what we have to do,” Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings said in her address at a press conference held at the NDC’s headquarters in commemoration of the passing of its founder, the late Jerry John Rawlings, Zanetor’s dad, Konadu’s late husband.

The rather daring-call by pretty-faced Zanetor was greeted by cheers and applauds from a section of her audience at the press conference.

Public response after the call has been of mix reactions.

Nana Konadu, founder of the NDP and the party’s former presidential candidate has however not stated an official position on whether she indeed wishes to return to the NDC.

However, Managing Editor of the Daily Dispatch newspaper, Ben Ephson, a  Veteran journalist cum credible political pollster, has said the absence of Nana Konadu from the NDC has not  affected the party’s political fortunes in any significant way therefore it would be needless for the party to go beg for her return.

Ben Ephson explained the statistics: “Mrs. Rawlings (when she was presidential candidate of her NDP) got less than 6,600 votes in 2020. She placed 9th, beating only Akua Donkor and Henry Lartey. So politically, her relevance is virtually zero, and rather it could annoy people not to vote for NDC, that it’s a party that someone has ridiculed you, left, the person did not do well and you have gone abegging her to come. It will rather be negative. If she decides to walk in, politics is about numbers. But if NDC takes the initiative, they could lose out, some people might decide not to even vote for them,” Ben Ephson told Joy FM.

He argued that Nana Konadu resigned from the NDC on her own freewill in 2012 and at the time, not even her husband, the influential former President Rawlings, could get her to change her mind.

Therefore, she should be the one initiating steps of her supposed return to the NDC rather than the party elders chasing after her.

Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, apart from plying a very significant role in the formation of the NDC and its electoral victories, served the party in several capacities and even rose to become the party’s National Second Vice Chairperson.

She, even at a point, contested to become the party’s presidential candidate but performed poorly at the primaries.

One of the several reasons she gave for her resignation was that the NDC party leadership, by then, had shifted from the founding principles of probity and accountability.

MORE SOON.