Ghana: Jerry John Rawlings will not back President Mills

According to senior officials in the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), former president Jerry John Rawlings has withdrawn support for President John Atta Mill's 2012 campaign.

Speaking to NDC party chiefs in the Ashanti Region on 4th April, Rawlings told a private meeting that he believed the president had failed Ghanaians and was no longer worthy of his support.

He told the officials that his decision not to campaign for the Mills-Mahama ticket had nothing to do with reports that his wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings, may challenge the incumbent at the NDC primaries in December this year.

The NDC's Ashanti Regional Youth Organiser, Kweku Boahene, who attended the meeting, said that Rawlings' comments came as a shock to the many executives present at the meeting.

Boahene noted: “We think that Professor Atta Mills is doing what is expected of him and we are fully in support of him and we will do everything possible to make sure that we campaign for him vigorously for him to win 2012.”

Rawlings' supporters, however, including his spokesman Kofi Adams, have played down the comments, maintaining that journalists took them out of context.

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