Former First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings
Managing Editor of the Daily Dispatch Ben Ephson has cast dark shadows on suggestions to get Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, the wife of the late Founder of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), rejoining the party.
He said NDC will rather lose votes if Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings rejoins the party.
“In 2020, she got less than 6,600 votes,” Mr Ephson noted on TV3′s News @10 on Friday, November 12.
“It tells you that her departure from the party did not affect the party numerically. Politics is about numbers and if she decides to take a step in rejoining the party, I will be shocked and people might say ok.
“But if the NDC makes the attempt to cajole her to come back, the party will be worse off for it.”
The suggestion for the party leadership to extend an olive branch to the former First Lady to return was articulated by Member of Parliament for Klottey Korley Constituency Dr Zanetor Rawlings, who is also a daughter to the former first couple.
She made the suggestion at a ceremony to mark the first anniversary of the death of her father, Jerry John Rawlings, who founded the party.
The ceremony at the NDC headquarters attracted the party’s elders, to whom the plea was made.
The NDC MP wanted the move to be made to brighten the fortunes of the party in the 2024 polls.
Mrs Rawlings had left the NDC in 2012 to found the National Democratic Party (NDP) after unsuccessfully contesting then incumbent, the late Professor John Evans Atta Mills.
Ben Ephson was of the opinion that if Mr Rawlings himself had not been able to bring back his wife while alive, who else can.
He rather criticised Dr Zanetor Rawlings for the manner in which she made the plea.
He said she has rather made it difficult for a reunion between the NDC and her mother.
“She herself knew the slippery ground she was treading. She should have been a bit more diplomatic, finding ways and means but throwing it out there that the party should go and bring her mother was a bit undiplomatic and it’s going to harden people’s attitude.”