NPP Pulls Record Crowd

THE CROWD was like the sea at the Kasoa Old Park yesterday when President J. A. Kufuor told Ghanaians to vote for Nana Akufo-Addo, flag-bearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) as the next President of Ghana, a move which many people consider a technical-dress-rehearsal of the President’s handing-over ceremony on January 7, 2009.

President Kufuor himself was taken aback, and confessed that never before had he seen such a large number of people at a single political event in his forty-years of political career.

When Nana Addo arrived at the rally grounds at exactly a quarter after 4 pm, the enthusiastic crowd went into a type of ecstatic frenzy, almost impossible to be aptly described in cold print.

The already charged atmosphere became electrified when Nana Addo briefly did the Kangaroo dance by raising both hands mid-air and pushing them back and forth rhythmically to Philipa Baafi’s ‘Go High’ song; a Christian praise song which had been adopted as the official NPP campaign song for the December polls.

They seemed oblivious of the scorching sun and stood beneath the open skies, with hands raised skywards as they danced, screamed their heads off and cheered the various speakers.

Their passionate support for their party was undisputable. Every activity in and around Kasoa had come to a halt as food vendors and petty traders made brisk business; and every single pole all the way from the rally ground in the Central Region to Obetsebi-Lamptey Circle in the Greater Accra Region was decorated with NPP flags.

Vehicular movement on the Kasoa-Accra dual-carriage asphalt road almost came to a stand-still as drivers slowly accelerated their vehicles bumper to bumper.

A significant beauty about the spectacle was the fact that the crowd displayed signs of love and unity: some bought sachet water and shared among themselves, others bought biscuits and shared to anyone interested, and there were many of such gestures.