Botchwey won’t wash with Rawlings as Mahama’s running mate

The host of Metro TV’s Good Evening Ghana, Paul Adom-Otchere, has suggested that Jerry John Rawlings will not be pleased if Professor Kwesi Botchwey is chosen to be John Mahama’s running mate.

This, he said, could be a side effect of the bad blood between Botchwey and the founder of the National Democratic Congress.

In his view, Mahama will be better off selecting someone else as his running mate for the 2020 presidential election.

“Not one Rawlings likes”

Adom-Otchere believes Professor Botchwey is not a candidate who Rawlings likes, and that he would therefore not approve of him as a running mate.

Speaking on the editorial segment of his show on Tuesday night, he said Rawlings is likely to reject the former finance minister.

“Those who think that you need to have a candidate Mr Rawlings likes, they think that Kwesi Botchwey is not the one,” Adom-Otchere said.

“If you go and have Kwesi Botchwey as the running mate, you will have a situation where JJ is going to speak against the ticket, and when he speaks against the ticket, something happens.”

“Fante Confederacy”

The broadcaster further alleged that a “Fante Confederacy” in the opposition NDC is the root cause of Rawlings’s dislike for Professor Botchwey.

This clique, he said, sidelined and disrespected the party founder during John Evans Atta-Mills’s time as president.

“The so-called Fante Confederacy who took real power under the Mills administration and were running the show, their school of thought is that ‘forget about Rawlings; he has nothing to offer the NDC, his popularity is gone’. And they suppose the so-called mythical popularity of J J Rawlings was created by them, their teams and theories that they used in the media in the olden days . . .

“They actually believe that JJ owes his popularity to their intelligence,” he said.

Other candidates

Many names have been discussed in recent months, as speculation mounts about who will become Mahama’s running mate.

While Botchwey has been mentioned, the likes of Haruna Iddrisu, the Minority Leader in Parliament and MP for Tamale South, and Zanetor Rawlings, MP for Korle Klottey, have also been mooted as possible candidates.

E A Alanore

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