Dr. Cadman Atta Mills, brother to late President John Evans Atta Mills, has disclosed his brother was offended by the series of scathing criticism poured on him by former president J.J Rawlings.
“[Late President] Mills got very hurt at a point when ex-president Rawlings was being cruel,” he divulged Wednesday on Starr Chat.
“Some of the things that ex-President Rawlings said were a bit cruel,” Dr. Atta Mills who served his brother as his senior presidential advisor during his presidency told Starr Chat host Bola Ray.
Appearing extremely emotional in the studio of Starr 103.5 FM, Wednesday night, the former World Bank economist, painted a disconsolate picture of his late brother’s stay at the then seat of government, the Christianborg Castle, saying he regretted “entrusting his [late Mills’] physical and emotional well-being” to others.
“I would come back and I would realize that he was a very lonely man…extremely lonely man…Oh! My God I would go to his quarters in the Castle which were not really basically fit for human being to live in. I mean my God and he will be sitting in this chair very quietly,” Dr. Atta Mills said.
For him, handlers of his brother during his sick periods betrayed him for hiding his ailment for political expediency. According to him, they were insensitive towards his brother who was deteriorating at a point and had to take him to get proper treatment for the former president in the USA and South Africa.
“My brother got very sick and was in South Africa in 2005 and he had treatment in South Africa and part of the effect of the treatment that he had was that progressively it affected his vision and affected his hearing a little bit. Otherwise, the treatment was extremely successful and he was getting progressively better. The only problem he had was [with] his vision and even that was getting better with time. We were very conscious of the sickness he had in 2005, and, therefore, he regularly had medical checkups to confirm that everything was ok,” he recounted.
He continued: “Now, some things were happening that I must be very honest I wasn’t happy about. Fiifi, as I called him, was very open, very honest and he’ll sit down with you and tell you in gory detail what his prognosis was, what the diagnosis of his disease was.
“He’s not somebody who will hide things, but for some strange reason, they decided that politically it was not allowable for people to know that he was sick. …Before that I went to China and when I came back I couldn’t recognise my brother, he was not even coherent. He was very visibly sick and I’d never seen him like that before and I said we had to evacuate him immediately. …We had to go to the U.S and that is when they started telling me that elections are going to be soon and politically it was not right. …That was the first time I was very disrespectful of the Presidency.
“I told them my peace of mind and I decided we had to go to the USA. What really got me furious was that they said he was going to the U.S for a routine medical checkup and I said what are you people talking about. My brother is a human being, he’s not well. …I wanted him to take the time necessary to get well. The fact of your being a president doesn’t mean you don’t get sick and what is political about getting sick but you see the narrative had been developed for a long time that he was a very sick man, he was on the verge of death at any given time, all of these were not true.”
“Whatever got him ill, was it in April or May, was something I’d never seen before. Surely enough we went to the US and lucky enough they detected very quickly what’s causing it and he got much better. I was very angry with him when he came back and he wanted to show everybody that he was well. …I confronted him on a lot of things including that.”
