President John Mahama must use his last State of the Nation address billed for Thursday, 5 January, to render an unqualified apology to former President Jerry John Rawlings for “alienating” him during his four-year term in office, Mr Sam Okudzeto, former president of the Ghana Bar Association (GBA), has said.
The veteran lawyer also said Mr Mahama must offer a similar apology to the founder of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) on behalf of his young appointees who were “rude” to Mr Rawlings.
Mr Mahama is leaving office on January 7 after losing last year’s election to the New Patriotic Party’s Nana Akufo-Addo.
In Mr Okudzeto’s view, Mr Mahama must use his last state function as president to say sorry to Mr Rawlings for sidelining him and also to his party for failing them.
“…Normally if you are leaving office, you may try to apologise to people you may have hurt or harmed … that’s one thing he should do. It is natural. You can never be in office without hurting people,” Mr Okudzeto said.
As far as an apology to Mr Rawlings is concerned, Mr Okudzeto told Joy FM: “That is very important also because I think he has so much alienated himself from him, and I think he needs to apologise for that because he was the founder of the party, no matter what happened nobody can deny that. And he needed to be accorded that respect. But I think a lot of the young people around Mahama have been rude to [former] president Rawlings and I think that is something that he on behalf of those people should apologise to Rawlings for, that should be part of his address.”
Source: GhanaWeb
