A political marketing strategist with the University of Ghana Business School, Kobby Mensah, has downplayed the idea that Working With Rawlings, the book by Professor Kwamena Ahwoi, will have any significant impact on the chances of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the December elections.
He however admitted that the book could distract the party and stop it from focusing on what he described as “the supply-side perspective”.
Effects in the Rawlings camp
Dr Mensah was speaking on the Asaase Breakfast Show with Kojo Mensah and Nana Yaa Mensah about the top political and social developments of the past week.
He argued that there would be effects but these would be minor.
“For instance, those in the Rawlings camp may have some kind of cold feet in campaigning for the party,” he said.
“But people have [real] issues they want the party to deal with … such as education, health et cetera. So [the book] will not influence voter choice going into the election,” he said.
Differing views
However, contributing to the same programme, Fred Amankwah Sarfo, a former aspirant for the national chairmanship of the New Patriotic Party, disagreed with this assertion.
He argued that the book makes instructive statements about John Dramani Mahama and how Jerry Rawlings, the founder of the NDC and former president, regarded him before he became the running mate to Professor John Evans Atta Mills.
Amankwah said that the NDC’s seeming disquiet is very worrying, because officials of the party sometimes refrain from commenting on the book.
“If your internal mechanism is ineffective then you might fail in selling your message for the electorate, because you may not reach out to the voter as you should,” he argued.
“We all saw how the NDC used Chasing the Elephant Into the Bush, authored by Dr Athur Kennedy, against the NPP [after the 2008 general election] and the effect it had on the NPP party,” he said.
No holds barred
The book Working With Rawlings, by Professor Kwamena Ahwoi, revisits experiences during his 19 years of working with the former president, chronicling the ups and downs and untold stories from behind the scenes.
The author has described it as a no-holds-barred account of his working relationship with President Rawlings. However, critics and some of the individuals Ahwoi describes in the book deny having acted or said things that the book attributes to them.
Others have questioned the timing of the memoir’s publication and the book has generated heated reactions on both sides of the political divide.
Fred Dzakpata
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