Posted: Daily Guide |Wednesday, 14 July 2010
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
THE MANAGING Editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt, says the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) is likely to lose the 2012 general elections if it continues to handle the affairs of the country as it is now.
He believes the NDC is currently charting a course that would eventually lead them into opposition and has therefore warned the leadership of the party to put their house in order before the disaster befalls them.
“2012 is crucial, if they lose it, they’ve lost it forever,” was exactly how he put it when he spoke on Peace FM’s ‘Kokrokoo’ morning show yesterday.
According to him, the current division and various interests in the NDC have the tendency to degenerate into chaos if not properly handled.
In a subsequent interview with DAILY GUIDE, Mr. Pratt asked, “If they succeed in undermining the current administration and create the impression that this administration has failed and so on, who is going to vote for them?”, adding “they will not win the elections.”
He said “if they don’t win the elections and another party (the NPP) wins the elections, look at all the prospects available to that party.
If nothing at all, the oil revenue will plug the holes in the budget. Anybody who is in power and has so many resources will be able to solve the basic problems of the people; electricity, water and so on.”
For this reason, he noted that any party which manages to win power has the tendency of staying in power for a very long time.
If this should happen, he does not envisage the NDC coming to power anytime soon, since according to him, it will take them several years to win back the confidence of Ghanaians.
He said “it is obvious some people are trying to undermine the credibility of the President from the statements they make. If you, for instance, consider the utterances of the former President, he says the government is not only slow but it is in reverse. He refers to the current President as Konongo ‘kaya’.”
“All of these things are indications that…and listening to Nana Konadu’s interview on Joy FM and listening to some key people in the administration, it is obvious that there is some effort to undermine the authority of the President to create the impression that the government has failed and all of that. It is clear,” he stated.
Mr. Pratt could not fathom why certain elements in the NDC and specifically those suspected to be agents of the Rawlingses would prevent any journalist from performing his legitimate duty.
This, he said, was because the NDC as a party and a political institution has come of age to be still associated with such acts that would affect its image.
He said it was because of that negative image that the likes of the late Justice D.F. Anang and President Mills, who were ‘outsiders’, were invited to join the party.
According to him, this was part of the NDC’s image-saving campaign which goes way back to the days of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) where journalists were arrested and thrown into jail without cause.
Mr. Pratt was speaking about the supposed abduction of his photographer, Mohammed Dauda, when he attempted to take shots of the Adjiringano residence of the former First Family.
Dauda and his other colleague, Duke Tagoe, had gone to Rawling’s Adjiringano residence to take shots of the building for a story they were doing but minutes after they got there and attempted to take the picture, a vehicle with about five occupants pulled up and ordered Dauda to enter.
When he refused and took to his heels, they chased him into a nearby bush where they captured him and took him to a house where he later escaped from.
Though Mr. Pratt insists that one of the gentlemen who abducted the photographer, whose name was given as Nartey, is an agent of ex-President Rawlings, the office of the former President has denied any complicity in the issue, claiming that the story was only cooked-up to put the former First family in bad light and public ridicule.
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