NPP cannot be trusted — NDC

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has said the New Patriotic Party (NPP) cannot be trusted with regard to its overtures to collaborate towards a peaceful elections.
It said the NDC was committed to peace and stability during the elections, however “a party that is busily lying about free education, free healthcare, free bus ride and deliberately shielding its supporters who are breaking the law cannot be trusted”.
Mr Fiifi Kwetey, the Propaganda Secretary of the NDC, stated this at a press conference at the party’s headquarters in Accra on Monday in response to the NPP’s accusation that the NDC was planning to plunge Ghana into chaos to prepare the way for power sharing.
Recently, the National Chairman of the NPP, Mr Peter Mac Manu, called on his NDC colleagues to collaborate with the security agencies to ensure a peaceful elections.
According to Mr Mac Manu, he had written a letter to his colleague in the NDC and was awaiting a reply and possible implementation of the suggestions.
On the alleged preparation by the NDC for power sharing, Mr Kwetey denied the existence of such a move and said the NDC unlike the NPP had over the years proved beyond all reasonable doubt that it was committed to democratic process.
This, he said, was amply demonstrated when the NDC in 2000 presided over a smooth election and handed over peacefully to the NPP.
He said prior to the 2000 elections, the NDC government ensured a complete revision of the 1992 register, introduced transparent ballot boxes and colour photo ID cards, annual opening of the voter register for those who had attained voting age and public display of election results at the constituency and national levels.
He said Ghanaians and the NDC did not need a power sharing government but an end to NPP-rule, which had been characterised by corruption, cocaine trafficking and usaege, rise in crime, deception, broken promises and rise in cost of living.
Mr Kwetey said Prof J.E.A. Mills, the NDC presidential candidate, had no plans in sharing power with his NPP counterpart, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, whose campaign had been marked by deception and empty promises.
He said in all cases of power sharing in Africa, it had been occasioned by the refusal of an incumbent party to accept defeat after it had lost an election and not when an opposition party had been defeated.
He explained that the NDC’s Director of International Affairs, Mr Kofi Attoh, who was being accused of going to Kenya to learn the power sharing deal, was indeed in Kenya but at the behest of the Frederich Erbert Foundation as a resource person at an international seminar.
Mr Kwetey said it was the NPP that called for power sharing during a meeting after the 2000 election moderated by the Christian Council whose secretary outlined the NPP’s demands to include 50 per cent of all parliamentary seats and 40 per cent of executive positions.
He said it was ironic that the NPP would call the NDC violent because the NPP and its antecedent had been violent to the extent of throwing bombs to destabilise the country during Kwame Nkrumah’s regime.
He said their presidential primaries to the election of their parliamentary aspirants had been full of bloody incidents and later extended to supporters of the NDC.