Posted: Daily Guide |Tuesday, 15 February 2011
www.dailyguideghana.com
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
The famous ‘all die be die’ comment by the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) refuses to die a natural death, as it continues to generate heat in political circles.
The latest of these is the clash between a leading member of the NPP, who is aspiring to become the party’s parliamentary candidate in the Ablekuma South constituency, Ursula Owusu, and Presidential Aide, Stanislav Xoese Dogbe.
Ursula appeared on Metro TV’s ‘Good Morning Ghana’ show wearing a branded T-shirt with the bold inscription ‘ALL DIE BE DIE,’ incurring the anger of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC).
This follows calls by NDC for the NPP presidential candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to apologise for comments he made at a meeting with party faithful at Koforidua in the Eastern region, urging them to be bold--a comment which he repeated in several other meetings in the Greater Accra. Nana Addo is now in the Upper East region, and he is expected to repeat the same message.
The wearing of the T-shirt by Ursula seemed to have provoked Stan Dogbe, a man who until recently did not have his name in the official list of presidential appointees sent to Parliament. According to him, Ursula who happens to be the vice president of the Federation of International Women Lawyers (FIDA), was only trying to court what he described as cheap popularity for herself to lobby for a ministerial appointment should Nana Addo become President after the 2012 elections.
Stan Dogbe of the infamous ‘Dogbegate’ scandal told Accra-based Citi FM why Ursula Owusu should be wearing a T’ Shirt with that inscription.
“As for Ursula, she thinks that being boisterous and overly supportive of whatever Nana Addo says whether good or bad is what would give her the popularity that she requires to win her parliamentary seat or get her a ministerial appointment in Nana Addo’s government. I am sorry Nana is nowhere near the Presidency in 2012 or 2016 and she ought to realize that this country would have to remain stable before they come back to power,” he charged.
But Ursula dismissed Stan’s criticisms insisting that there was nothing wrong with the T-shirt she displayed on the programme, indicating that she wore the dress in response to the NPP presidential candidate’s call for party members to be bold and defend their right in the 2012 elections, since the NPP would not succumb to the intimidations of the NDC government.
She therefore accused Stan of rather being the person who was scheming to win cheap popularity and recognition in the Mills administration.
The NPP stalwart thus urged Stan to show some element of respect to Nana Addo who fought against the brute dictatorship of the AFRC and PNDC of former President Rawlings.
We’re ready for NDC
Adding his voice, Boakye Agyarko, Campaign Manager for Nana Akufo-Addo said the NPP was more than ready to meet the NDC boot-for-boot in 2012, adding they would no longer sit in laxity for their members to be beaten by NDC goons as happened in Chereponi, Atiwa, Akwatia and Agbogbloshie.
Mr. Agyarko told DAILY GUIDE yesterday that “we should stop this hypocrisy. NDC has visited violence upon this nation many a time. We refuse to be intimidated this time round. We are going to stand our grounds. Let the NDC, given their character, do their worst, we will be ready for them but we will not run.”
He therefore turned down a request by the NDC for Nana Addo to apologise for the “all die be die” comment.
“You apologise for a wrong. The NDC has to convince us what the wrong is ethnocentrism. That is a figment of their imagination. If you listen to what Nana Addo said, he said ‘ye se yen Akan fuo.’ Do you understand that, it means somebody told Nana Addo or they say? It is not Nana Addo saying ‘Akan fuo.”
Until then, Mr. Agyarko noted, “you don’t render an apology because someone insists you render an apology. “Nana Addo is not inciting anybody. He is not asking people to jump onto the streets with cudgels and cutlasses to attack the NDC.”
Instead, he said, all the NPP leader did was to send a message to the NDC that “if they continue in the fashion they have always done in Chereponi, Atiwa and all of those areas and if they believe that we are cowards and each time they will attack us we will run away, no. They will be wrong; this time round we will not run away”.
For him, his colleagues in the NDC are upset because “now their usual victim is ready to face them, the school-yard bully, that’s all it is.”
Mr. Agyarko recalled how his younger brother and former Chief Executive of the Food and Drugs Board (FDB), Emmanuel Agayrko, was nearly lynched by members of the NDC in the year 2008 when he stood as NPP parliamentary candidate for Lower Manya constituency in the Eastern Region.
A night before the 2008 general elections, Mr. Agyarko narrated that “seven armed men, armed with pump action guns driving the vehicle of the NDC MP, drove into his house (and) started firing.
“Luckily, my brother was not there but my sisters and other relatives who were in that house were recklessly beaten and most of them injured” he said, noting that “the attack is imminent again. They have threatened to attack him again.”
In that regard, the NPP Campaign Manager could not but say “the question I want to ask the NDC and all those who are saying that Nana Addo shouldn’t have said what he said is ‘what is the advice they should give my brother when the attack comes. What advice do they want to give my brother; that he should run away, is that what they are going to ask him to do when the next attack comes?”
He said that it would be important for those calling for the NPP presidential candidate to apologise to understand the context in which Nana Addo was speaking, stressing, “If the NDC insists on lying by taking part of the sentence away in its attempt to incriminate Nana Addo, shame on them.”