Former First Lady Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings, seeking to be elected one of six vice chairpersons of the ruling National Democratic Congress, says her desire is to see a stronger party behind the Mills-led government. She told Myjoyonline.com that the NDC party needs to be “very solid and strong” to be able to direct the government in its activities, and she would therefore count on the party’s delegates to congress this weekend to elect dedicated, selfless and hard working individuals who will help deliver a more formidable party. In a wide ranging interview that touched on her aspirations, the party, government, the 31st December Women’s Movement and the weekend’s NDC congress in Tamale, she espoused that “In every country it is a party that holds up a government, not a government holding up a party. It’s never done anywhere. So once the party structure is weak, we cannot then guide the government in areas that it should work hard and areas where it’s not doing too well, and we should be able to let our government know what the people are saying; it’s not what is in the newspapers, it’s not what people are saying on the TV, go into town…you don’t even have to walk far, and they will tell you a lot. “I think that if the party is strong a lot of these things can be done to refocus where we want to go to and help our government in some of these areas. You need a strong party in order to have a strong government,” she told Myjoyonline.com Editor Isaac Yeboah in an interview. She is highly hopeful that delegates will give her a massive vote: “I hope so. I think that a lot of the women in the communities that I have visited; and there is hardly any community in Ghana I haven’t been to; know my capabilities, know my ability, they know my commitment to the party, total commitment to the party; they know how much I love this party, maybe I love it to a fault; but my passion for the party perhaps, you can equate it to the passion that my husband has for the country…We struggled to put this party where it is and I would want to go in there to help continue in the forward march of the party. I do hope that the (delegates) will vote in the right direction; vote for me and vote for progressive people that are seeking election; vote for people who will have time to actually see to the development of the party; vote for people who are pretty selfless and care about the party and will be able to strategize in many ways to let the party become more formidable than it is today.” Nana Konadu spoke of the party’s need for a membership drive anchored on good programmes with which the masses will identify and therefore desire to join in their prosecution. She condemned recent allegations of vote-buying in the party and called for a return to the party’s founding principles of integrity, honesty, truthfulness and fellow feeling, which she said identify the party from main opposition party, the New Patriotic Party. “Even if I had that kind of money - which I do not have - if I had that kind of money, looking at what the NDC is made of, what it rests upon; the integrity that we started the party with; the integrity of the members who helped to build this party, it is absolutely wrong to go and influence the voter with money; but people are impoverished so if you want to give them money fine, but they should also vote with their conscience; that I should not go and put money in somebody’s hand and then the person votes for me because of the money. They should look at what the person is made of – can that person help to improve the party throughout? If they cannot why are you giving your vote to them? I think that we should move away from what other parties are doing and come back to our basics…I think that we have to bring them back to the basics that integrity is all we really have and if we lose that integrity, we might as well be called NPP, because that is what they do. We must be different and our difference must show through our integrity, accountability, probity, honesty, truth and justice.” Story by Isaac Yeboah/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana