Rawlings, NDC Elders To Embark On Nationwide Healing Tour

Elders of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) will soon embark on a nationwide tour to wage peace and reconciliation among the rank and file of the party.

Members of the party’s Council of Elders, led by the founder, former President Jerry John Rawlings, will undertake the peace mission, touching base with party faithful still grieving over the party’s loss in the 2016 elections and helping them heal and move on.

The decision on the reconciliation tour was reached at the Council of Elders’ meeting yesterday.

As earlier reported, the meeting had had, as main agenda, a briefing on the Kwesi Botchwey Committee report.

Members of the 13-member committee are said to have broken down the 55-page report to the Council of Elders.

“After the report had been presented to the elders it had been decided that a nationwide peace mission be constituted to go round the country and mend broken hearts and reunite the party,” a source told The Republic.

As the Council of Elders of the NDC is chaired by former President Rawlings, it is expected that the party’s founder, who had been so critical of his own party when it was in power, will lead a high powered delegation to tour and wage peace among the party’s rank and file.

The meeting is also said to have decided on the need to elect a vice chairman for the Council of Elders, which is currently chaired by former President Rawlings alone, without any supporting cast.

Meanwhile, the Council’s expected consideration of former Attorney General, Martin Amidu’s misconduct against the party did not happen.

A source explains that Mr. Amidu’s issue was not raised at all because a petition against him is already with the Disciplinary Committee of the party.

“The Council of Elders did not think it right to consider the Amidu issue because it would be, if you like, subjudice to do so, given that the issue is already being determined by the Disciplinary Committee of the party,” the source said.

Earlier media reports ahead of the Council of Elders’ meeting had said a petition against Mr. Martin Amidu by some two party members would be considered by the elders of the party.

Mr. Amidu, a former Vice Presidential candidate of the party and Attorney General in the erstwhile Mills’ government, has since constituted himself into a crusading Judas against the party after he was sacked from being AG by President Mills in 2012 for gross insubordination.

In a new found hobby of writing epistles and feeding them to opposition media, the man, who is seen to have been emotionally immature, has made all sorts of unproven claims against the party.

His latest claim that President Mahama had appointed Mrs. Charlotte Osei as Chairperson of the Electoral Commission as part of an agenda to rig the 2016 elections has since poisoned his credibility further and incurred him a call for discipline against him by two members of the party who have since petitioned the party.

Amidu’s wild claims have also led to former Deputy Chief of Staff, Dr. Valerie Sawyerr, publicly dismissing him as a hypocritical whiner.