Former Local Government Minister, Prof Kwamena Ahwoi, has detailed how former President Jerry Rawlings nearly killed Bede Ziedeng, a member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) for opposing his choice of flagbearer.
In his book: ‘Working With Rawlings’, he said Mr Ziedeng, then a member of the Elections Committee of the NDC, was campaigning vigorously for Obed Asamoah against late President John Evans Atta-Mills at the 2002 NDC Congress to elect National Executives of the party.
His conduct, Prof. Ahwoi said, angered Mr Rawlings, who launched a vicious attack on him at the entrance of the Trade Fair Site in Accra.
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“Rawlings and his entourage got to the entrance and the crowd surged to acknowledge their hero, Rawlings got hold of his(Bede’s) testicles and squeezed them hard, so hard that he believes he fainted,” he narrated.
Below are excerpts from the book:
Bede Ziedeng was a rabid Obed Asamoah supporter and by extension, therefore, an anti- Mills person. This was known to President Rawlings. On the Congress day, Bede and other party members formed a human chain on the two sides of the entrance to the Congress Hall to provide a kind of protection for the VVIP as they entered. The crowd was very thick and it was not easy to see whatever was happening at the entrance. As Bede tells it, When Rawlings and his entourage got to the entrance and the crowd surged to acknowledge their hero, Rawlings got hold of his(Bede’s) testicles and squeezed them hard, so hard that he believes he fainted. When he recovered, he was outside the Congress Hall and people were fanning him. Those people did not know what had happened to him; they only knew that he had fainted.