Vote out NDC

A LEADING member of the Nana Akufo-Addo campaign team, Ms Frances Asiam, has called on Ghanaians to vote out the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the December 28 run-off because Professor John Evans Attah Mills has condoned with his supporters to threaten the fundamental human rights of Ghanaians, including hers.
Addressing a news conference in Accra on Monday, Ms Asiam noted that since the December 7, 2008 elections the NDC and its supporters had demonstrated violence and intimidation, which were intrinsic values of the party, of which she was formerly an influential member.
"Their actions do not augur well for the consolidation of our democracy," she added.
She claimed that after the elections, the NDC supporters seized the keys to a Metro Mass Transit bus in Tamale and burnt 16 acres of rice farms belonging to the Nanton Chief in the Northern Region.
According to her, a brutal assault was meted out to her in Koforidua by the NDC supporters during their National Congress, and that she was number three on the Rawlings’ infamous "Hit List", which had targeted some members of the clergy, judiciary, the media and some civilians.
Ms Asiam alleged that on November 24, 2008, one Dzidzor Tay, an NDC serial caller and party activist, sent a text message threatening her.
She claimed that when caller was interviewed by Asempa FM, a private radio station in Accra, she did not deny it.
"On December 21, I received a more sinister death threat asking me to call off this press conference or face death, I replied the text that I would go ahead," she stated.
She emphasised that some people had been victims of the NDC brutalities but were refusing to act but she would take those threats seriously because the nation had witnessed the erosion of human rights under the regime of the former president, Jerry John Rawlings, who also founded the NDC.
She added that a spokesperson of Prof. Attah Mills, Mr Koku Anyidoho, had also issued a threat against Dr Afari Gyan, the Chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC).
"Prof. Mills cannot be trusted when it comes to our security and fundamental human rights," she reiterated.
In another development, a group calling itself the Youth Activist Forum (YAF), a body sympathetic to the NPP, has alleged that it had information that seemed to indicate that some prominent NDC persons intended to infiltrate the Information Technology Department of the EC to tamper with the collation of results during the run-off.
“These persons have secured sophisticated electronic gadgets from South Africa to help them execute this agenda,” a spokesperson of the group, Mr Harry Afrim, told the press in Accra.
He added that those NDC persons had also sought the assistance of IT experts from South Africa to help their collaborators at the EC.
Mr Afrim said the group believed in the right of all political parties to hold meetings and deliberate on issues relevant to them.
He alleged that key NDC leaders, including Koku Anyidoho and Ms Hannah Tetteh were holding a series of meetings and planning how to carry out their schemes by changing figures in NPP strongholds with the connivance of some returning officers and other designs which were inimical to the democratic process.
According to him, these leaders had planned to undertake a dawn broadcast to misinform the public about government programmes such as the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), School Feeding Programme, Free Maternal Health Care and other laudable and socially-oriented programmes of the NPP.