I’ll bring Ghana back where it belongs — Nana Konadu

NANA Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, a former First Lady and the President of the 31 December Women’s Movement, says her decision to lead the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is not because of what she will gain, but because of what she plans to give back to the party and the country.
She has stated that because every government was given birth to by a political party through its manifesto, such a government must not be seen to be straying from the ideology, policies and the programmes of the party, an act the former First Lady accuses the current NDC government of doing.
The female presidential aspirant, who is contesting the sitting President, Professor J.E. A Mills, who is in his first term of office, maintains that her quest for the presidency is based solely on the fact that she is a die-hard NDC member who has the capacity to rejuvenate the party by pursuing a grass roots agenda.
Throwing more light on her decision for contesting the sitting President who is in the same party as she, Nana Konadu told traditional rulers in the Asogli Traditional Area in Ho on Tuesday, May 31, 2011, that, “When we won the last election, we wanted the NDC to pursue an agenda that would enable the party to perpetuate the development of our country and the development of its people but we can see that the party is withering like a flower. It is dwindling and almost collapsing”.
She poured her heart out to the chiefs and queens when she said, “Members of our party are actually defecting to the opposition. Whoever heard of a party in government having its people defecting to the opposition? Something is wrong,” she maintained.
She explained that she did not just get up to contest but she took the decision after “Members of the party came together; the youth came together; elders came together; they have talked to our founder; they have talked to a lot of our colleagues here; they have talked to me for almost a year; they were putting a lot of pressure and I accepted to be a candidate for the NDC”.
The former First Lady stepped down as a Vice-Chairperson of the party to enable her to contest the election scheduled for July 8 to July 10, 2011 in Sunyani, the Brong Ahafo regional capital.
Nana Konadu stated that there was a clear indication she was on the right track due to the huge air of rejuvenation that had flooded her party since she decided to contest President Mills.
She has, therefore, described as erroneous the assertion that it was improper for her to contest the presidency because her husband had been a President before.
She stressed that it took a certain level of vibrancy to be able to win elections from a determined political party like the New Patriotic Party (NPP), adding that surveys conducted on the NDC clearly show that “if we don’t change the candidate we are going back into opposition”.
In an interview with the Daily Graphic on June 16, 2011, Nana Konadu, who spoke through her Spokesperson, Mr Kofi Adams, expressed her preparedness to unite the NDC if she emerged as the presidential candidate of the party at its July congress.
She noted that the ugly situation where some leading party members broke away from the NDC after congresses would be a thing of the past under her administration as the flag bearer of a party which her husband formed in 1992.
She pointed out that the party had always been the loser whenever such leaders, as well as ordinary members, resigned or defected to other political parties.
Leading members of the party such as Mr Kofi Asante, Dr Obed Yao Asamoah, Goosie Tandoh, Bede Ziedeng and Ms Frances Essiam resigned from the NDC to either form their own political parties or join others.
Nana Konadu had made it clear several times that she was contesting for the position to lead the party to strengthen its structures, as well as provide sterling and inspiring leadership for the country.
To put her words into action, Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings made history on May 3, 2011 when she became the first female to have pick nomination forms to vie for the flag bearer position of a political party in Ghana.
After picking the forms, she told the crowd that was waiting outside, “I will bring Ghana back to where it belongs.”
Nana Konadu later presented the forms to her husband and Founder of the NDC, former President Jerry John Rawlings, at the Ridge office of the former President, where he congratulated her, saying the task ahead would not be easy.
“We will be fighting all the way through and we’ve got to remain very vigilant,” said the former President, whose statement put to rest the perception that he was not in support of his wife’s ambition.
To put her intentions to action, Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, on June 1, 2011, returned her nomination forms to the executive of the party in Accra.

Her profile
Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings was born on the November 17, 1948 in Cape Coast in the Central Region. She schooled at Achimota School, where she met her future husband, Jerry John Rawlings.
She continued at the then University of Science and Technology, where she read Art, specialising in Textiles. She was a student leader and an executive of Africa Hall, her hall of residence.
In 1975, just three years after graduating with honours from the University of Science and Technology with a bachelors' degree in graphic design, she earned an interior design diploma from the London College of Arts.
She pursued her education into the next couple of decades, acquiring a diploma in advanced personnel management from Ghana's Management Development and Productivity Institute in 1979 and a certificate in development from the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration in 1991.
Nana Konadu got married to her ‘sweetheart’ Jerry John Rawlings, an Air Force officer in 1977. She gave birth to her first child, Ezanetor Rawlings in 1978. Two other daughters and a son followed later; Yaa Asantewaa, Amina and Kimathi.
Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings came into the political limelight when her husband became Head of State briefly in 1979 and then from December 31, 1981 to January 6, 2001. She has been the president of the 31st December Women's Movement since 1982. The 31st December Women's Movement is a non-governmental organisation with the aim of projecting the interest of Ghanaian women irrespective of their social and economic standing. In 2009, she was elected the 1st Vice Chairperson of the NDC at a congress in Tamale.
In 1995 she received honorary doctorate degrees together with her husband at Lincoln University in Lincoln, Pennsylvania.
Realising Agyemang Rawlings’s "charm" and "substance," the New York Amsterdam News reported that she was praised by Ghana's permanent representative to the United Nations, Mr George Lamptey, when he said, "For the past 12 years she has stood by her husband in the struggle to restore Ghana”.
When not busy with her family or at work, Agyeman-Rawlings enjoys swimming, reading, dancing, camping, and collecting dolls from around the world. She also devotes time and money to such charitable causes as the National Radiopathy Project, Friends of the National Zoo, and the Ghana Girl Guides Association, to name a few.
When interviewed in Africa Report in January and February, 1995, Mrs Rawlings recalled that in the early 1980s, a few women approached her wanting to form a women's organisation and after a few meetings, little happened.
She said that after asking the women what they wanted to do as an organisation, "It was clear that we had to start with things that would earn money to develop their communities in the social sector.
Most of the women wanted things like water."
Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings spent time listening to women who came to her with their problems. Her movement taught some Ghanaian women how to generate income and save money for community projects. It encouraged them to become part of the decision making process in their villages, and explained policies of health and education.
The movement also offered an adult literacy programme to teach women to read and write — except that majority of the women could not do that. In addition, early marriages among female children were discouraged and programmes were offered on nutrition and immunisation.
In 1991, through the efforts of the 31st December Women Movement, Ghana became the first nation to approve the United Nations Convention on the Right of the Child. The movement also played a crucial role in the adoption of an "Intestate Succession Law," which is applicable to the survivors of anyone dying without a will. Traditionally, Ghanaian women had little or no rights of inheritance upon the death of their husbands. The new law provides a standard of inheritance.
Nana Konadu’s movement helped some village women to become involved in the electoral process.
"We literally just pounded it into them until they realised, hey, we don't want any of these people who are living outside our areas to come and stand in our areas to be elected," she said in Africa Report. "A lot of women are now on committees in their villages and districts, some are chairing the committees.... I can only say we've made a lot of impact, and I can see from the self-esteem and near arrogance of the women that now we've actually been able to break through this thick wall," she said.
Pointing to the area of finance as one of their problems, Agyemang- Rawlings told Africa Report: "Most of the western embassies said we were just a political group and they didn't take time to listen. It took a lot of time just getting people to understand.... The more women enter politics, the better the world will be, because we don't think of wars and who is going to manufacture arms and who is going to kill the next person. We want to form linkages, network, and make the world a better place to live in."