How June 3rd Disaster urged me to run for Parliament

Daughter of the late President of Ghana, Jerry John Rawlings, Zenator Rawlings says her original plan wasn’t to be a Member of Parliament.

However, joining TV3 to donate relief items to victims of the June 3rd Disaster marked the beginning of her journey into political circles.

She made this known while speaking to Bola Ray on Accra-based Starr FM.

“Well, it was actually the June 3rd incident that informed me. It was a very interesting situation because this was not my original intention. I actually followed through with the June 3rd disaster because at the time I was partnering with TV3 and we were giving out relief items to the victims of that whole disaster.

I remember there was one point when we were doing the donations and at some point, I just thought we needed to go a bit deeper. So in one of the communities specifically Odawna. At the time I did not realize I was actually going to end up becoming the Member of Parliament that would include that area. As we stood on the truck, I think I was with the then Ghana’s Most Beautiful winner.

As we were giving things out, I thought my goodness, there is so much debris in the area and it felt strange to give relief items without seeing to the environment. The sanitation issues, all I could see was a disease outbreak while you’re giving out items. So I really got out of the truck did a bit of a tour of the area with opinion leaders and I said why is the place so filthy and the complaints were that they weren’t getting the support.

When they did clean ups they weren’t getting the support to have the waste material getting clear away. So it created almost like a feeling of why bother which if you look from a distance you assume people are not willing to try but it’s only when you try to understand and ask with an open mind that you actually find out some of the reasons why people are not doing more than you think they should.

That resulted in this huge clean up and I mean the rest is history. It wasn’t with the intention of running as a Member of Parliament that I started doing this. It was just a recognition for us to have a clean environment because there is a link between the environment and your health. You can have the best hospitals but if your environment is not clean it doesn’t make any difference,” she said.