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General News of Tuesday, 9 January 2007

Source: Mustapha Hamid

Rejoinder to Chronicle attack on Nana Akufo-Addo

The story was that on the morning of Friday January 5, the National Council of the New Patriotic Party(NPP) met to discuss the programme for the Annual Delegates Conference to be held Jan 5, 6, 7 at Koforidua.

All the major players of the party, including the majority of aspiring presidential aspirants were there. The decision taken then was that the impression should not be created that the conference was a congress to elect the next flagbearer, so any politicking or blatant exhibitionism from the hopefuls should be avoided.

Since this fell in line with Nana Akufo-Addo's own preparation for the conference, he decided not to deviate from what was agreed by the party leadership.

He decided to enter the conference grounds, Eredec Hotel, without a convoy and certainly without any orchestrated praise singers. However, when he got there to park his car away from the main entrance to the lobby, with his window down, several of the party supporters who noticed him ran to greet him. As evidence from the pictures provided [see photo report] show, he accordingly got out of his private four wheel drive vehicle to acknowledge the foot soldiers. When he got into the hall, where the party delegates were gathered as well, as the pictures show, he acknowledged them.

Indeed, the radio stations reported that the Foreign Minister received the loudest cheer out of all the Cabinet Ministers whose names were mentioned for acknowledgement. This could be seen as an indication that you need not to hire a mob to influence the perception of ones popularity. Also at the rally his support remained constant, receiving the loudest cheer among the Ministers.