Last Monday, as the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the J.J. Rawlings Foundation marked what would have been Jerry John Rawlings’ 79th birthday, legal luminary Tsatsu Tsikata delivered a message that should echo beyond the walls of the party’s newly-named headquarters in Accra.
Speaking at a lecture on “From Revolution to Fourth Republic: The Rawlings Legacy”, he told the NDC: “We must raise the bar of service to the nation and mobilise the nation to reconstruct the future.”
It was more than a birthday tribute. It was a warning, a reminder, and a challenge - not only to the NDC, but to every political party and every Ghanaian who cares about governance.
Mr Tsikata’s core point was blunt: the NDC’s decisive victory in the 2024 elections must not become an excuse for low ambition.
He is right. Ghanaians did not vote for marginal improvement.
They voted for transformation.
They voted because they expect accountability, probity, discipline and service - the very values Rawlings made central to the NDC’s founding.
If a government defines success as “not as bad as the last one”, democracy loses.
Citizens deserve leadership that sets its own high standard, not one borrowed from a predecessor’s failures.
The message applies to all parties in power.
The yardstick must not be the opposition’s record.
The yardstick must be Ghana’s potential.
Mr Tsikata reminded the audience that Rawlings saw democracy as more than elections every four years.
For him, democracy meant economic empowerment - especially for rural producers whose work had long been undervalued. It meant expanding electrification so darkness did not define rural life.
It meant liberalising telecoms and broadcasting so information could flow.
It meant decentralisation and stronger grassroots participation.
Internationally, Rawlings restored Ghana’s standing.
He backed anti-apartheid struggles, helped broker peace in Liberia, and strengthened ties with the African diaspora.
At home, he fused revolutionary energy with constitutional order, handing over power peacefully and entrenching the Fourth Republic.
That legacy is not nostalgia. As Ghana Investment Promotion Centre Board Chairman Dr Akwasi Opong-Fosu said at the same event, renaming the NDC headquarters after Rawlings is a “covenant, not an act of nostalgia”.
A covenant means obligations.
It means every NDC appointee, MP, and party executive must ask daily: Does this decision reflect probity?
Does it serve ordinary citizens, not just politicians and their associates?
Does it build institutions or weaken them?
The Foundation’s Tree Guardianship Project is one example - translating values of patriotism and service into environmental action.
Mr Tsikata proposed a Rawlings Legacy Centre to document the former President’s leadership and the revolutionary era.
That is important. History teaches. But the greater legacy will be written in policy choices today: how public funds are used, how contracts are awarded, how corruption is fought, and whether wealth created by the nation actually benefits the many, not the few.
Government must make public service mean service to the public. Let every scandal be investigated, every asset declared, every promise tracked.
Ghanaians will forgive mistakes; they will not forgive betrayal.
Rawlings mobilised people. Mr Tsikata called for mobilising the nation to “reconstruct the future”.
That means citizens demanding standards, reporting corruption, protecting public property, and voting based on record, not rhetoric.
The Daily Graphic believes that the youth of this country have a part to play.
They must embrace courage, discipline, patriotism and service.
Age is not an excuse for apathy.
The future being “reconstructed” is yours.
Democracy is not a spectator sport.
“Raise the bar” is not a slogan for one party; it is a national demand and the bar Ghana needs.
Ghana’s problems are hard - debt, unemployment, flooding, galamsey, weak institutions.
They will not be solved by a government that aims to be “slightly better”.
They require bold, honest, disciplined leadership.
Although the lecture was delivered on a birthday, it was really about the country’s future.
“Raise the bar of service to the nation.”
Those five words should be pinned in every minister’s office, every assembly hall, every party secretariat.
If the NDC honours that call, it honours Rawlings.
If it doesn’t, no bust, no renamed headquarters, no annual lecture will save its legacy.
The nation is watching.
History is watching.
The bar has be
