Posted: Daily Guide |www.dailyguideghana.com
Wednesday, 06 October 2010
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
A group of National Democratic Congress (NDC) serial callers who identify themselves as the Media Analyst Group (MAG) met a stiff opposition from a journalist when they attempted to wage what some people have described as a ‘dirty propagandist war’ against the Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Akufo-Addo.
This was when the MAG, which has Accra-based legal practitioner Chris Ackummey as one of its leaders, organized a press conference at Kwesi Pratt’s Freedom Centre in Accra yesterday to outline a host of reasons they thought Nana Addo was not fit to be President of ‘Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana’.
Their emphasis was what they admitted in a statement read by Peter Ahmed Quarshie to be ‘speculations and supposed text messages’, which were sent to people by some faceless individuals and group of persons during the 2008 electioneering campaign.
Some of the messages alleged, among other things, that Nana Addo was addicted to alcohol and some illegal substances.
The group blamed Nana Addo for his supposed inability to exercise control and proper upbringing of one of his four daughters, Mary Fummy Gyankroma Akufo-Addo who was reported to have run her car into that of the Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Paa Amissah-Arthur last August and was subsequently charged for drunk driving.
They therefore asked, “If Nana Akufo-Addo has four daughters and if he cannot manage the upbringing of only four daughters, how on earth can we entrust the destiny of Ghana’s youth into his hands?”
But minutes after they finished addressing the press, Managing editor of the Bilingual Free Press newspaper, Alhaji Abubakar Mohammed Marzuk sought to know the essence of the press conference since he did not see it as something worth considering for an intellectual discourse.
The journalist did not understand why MAG said Nana Addo was not fit to rule the country, especially when most of the reasons they gave for their position was based on the actions of his 31-year-old daughter, a person old enough to take responsibility for her actions and inactions.
“I was expecting you to do a responsible analysis, out of which you will tell us that Akufo-Addo personally is proven to be a drunkard or proven to be a man of immorality. You have counted all the allegations,” he said.
As a group that claims to be media analysts, the Alhaji Marzuk said, “Contrary to your sense of analysis, you have just laid a very obvious contradiction.”
This, he said, was evident in the claim by MAG that a beach party was organized by Nana Addo at the La Pleasure Beach, where they alleged young men and women got drunk, smoked marijuana, sniffed cocaine, and had indiscriminate and unprotected sex, and the place was littered with condoms, “meaning there were still instances of protected sex.”
He asked, “How do you reconcile the two?” saying, “At anytime at all you come to raise these critical issues, the analysis must be responsible, must be critical, must be positive and must be concrete.”
The leadership of MAG did not challenge the editor’s criticisms of its analysis.
Meanwhile, aide to Nana Akufo-Addo Herbert Krapa, says what the NDC and MAG were doing confirmed their level of frustration in the Mills’s administration and the fact that they lacked ideas to manage the country to achieve the aspirations of the people.
This, according to him, was the reason they had resorted to such vile attacks on the personality of Nana Addo and those around him.
“If they think that they can be in office and fool the people with dirty politics, then they should know that they have more to lose than the NPP.”
“Our lawyers are looking at the document and what action has to be taken will be taken,” he said, adding, “but If the NDC feels that they are going to be re-elected by re-enacting a campaign of lies, insults and vilification, then the Good Lord and the majority of Ghanaians will show them the answer on election day.”
Mr Krapa said Nana Addo’s credentials in the various positions he had occupied in private and public service spoke volumes and that it would not be for the NDC or any of its groupings to tell whether he was fit to be President or not since Ghanaians would be the better judges in 2012.
According to him, Nana Addo was always guided by the three things that determined who could become President of Ghana or not, that is the “God Almighty, the Constitution of Ghana and the majority of the Ghanaian people.”