Daily Dispatch: How Rawlings almost declared a state of emergency

The Daily Dispatch says ex-President Rawlings was at the verge of declaring a state of emergency after the December 7 elections failed to produce a winner and Kufuor appeared most likely to win in the run-off. According to the paper, Rawlings allegedly instructed his top military commanders to 'move' so he could declare the state of emergency. “Noticeably, he had dispatched units of his crack 64th Battalion to Kumasi and…." "This threat was, however, diffused at the most critical juncture of Ghana's political development, when the commanders no longer felt intimidated by their boisterous commander-in-chief and defied his orders." "All the same, but rather ironically, by ceding power finally to the victorious candidate and assuring the first-ever peaceful power alternation, Rawlings gained credit for advancing the country's ...” The paper said the above quotes sum the unpredictable nature of ex-President Jerry John Rawlings and was part of an interesting article by Dr. Baffour Agyeman-Duah, Associate Executive Director of Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) and published with other articles in the recently launched book, 'Ghana - Governance in the Fourth Republic'. Dr. Agyeman-Duah said he interviewed six senior and other military officers who confirmed what Rawlings tried to do. He also revealed that one senior military commander confided in the author that he ordered his 'boys to block the commandos from their planned actions'. Dr. Agyeman-Duah also suggests that the appointment of some of the 'disobedient' commanders as ambassadors by the incoming President was a reward for their bravery in protecting the constitutional order. Source: Daily Dispatch