Atta Mills’ presidency was a mistake – NDC Chairman

• Posted on October 20, 2015
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

A stalwart of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) says selecting Prof John Evans Atta Mills to become President of Ghana by the party was a mistake.

According to the Eastern Regional NDC Chairman, Bismark Tawiah Boateng, the late President Mills was unhealthy to run for the office of president and that his untimely death made the NDC’s opponents to disparage them.

His contention is that the work of the president is tedious and hefty and needs a very healthy person to run such a position and therefore the NDC was not going to repeat the mistake it made in selecting Professor Mills.

“Being president is a very difficult job; it is not easy at all,” he told Adom FM’s Captain Smart yesterday, adding , “The president goes to the UN, he goes here and there and has to move everywhere.

“Therefore if we made a mistake in selecting unhealthy Atta Mills whom we lost in the final analysis and we are being blamed for it, must we go in for somebody like that once again?”

He confessed that the NDC leadership knew very well that President Mills was unhealthy and would not be able to perform his functions as expected but the party went ahead to sell him to Ghanaians just to win power.

“Sometimes I wonder why Mills became the president because it was a total mistake allowing him to run for president and subsequently dying because of ill health,” he said.

The NDC chairman then urged Ghanaians not to repeat the party’s mistake by voting for the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP’s) flagbearer, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, who he claims is also weak due to his age.

His point was that since President Mills was unhealthy and died aged 68, Nana Akufo-Addo’s age disqualified him from contesting incumbent John Dramani Mahama for president.

Without any provocation from the NPP, Tawiah Boateng said that Nana Akufo-Addo is only fit for the position of a member of the Council of State.

“Nana Addo is old and very weak; he should be made a member of the Council of State to advise President Mahama. He should not seek to be president,” he stated.

NDC Fights NDC

Tawiah Boateng’s comment on the late President Mills, who is from the Central Region, appeared to have incurred the wrath of his counterpart in the Central Region, Bernard Allotey Jacobs, who described his colleague as ‘politically naïve.”

Allotey Jacobs, fuming, told Adom FM that he doubted if Tawiah Boateng is a true NDC member.

“I don’t believe he is an NDC chairman; I mean no sensible NDC person will make such a statement,” he stressed.

The NDC Central Regional Chairman, who has sworn to defend the legacy of the late Atta Mills, described Tawiah Boateng’s statement as ‘most unfortunate.’

He said their target as regional chairmen is to ensure that President John Mahama is retained in power in 2016 to continue the Mills-Mahama legacy; and could not fathom the reasons for Tawiah Boateng’s utterances.

He called on his colleague to immediately render an unqualified apology to the party to avoid any possible sanctions.

By William Yaw Owusu