Atta-Mills Predicts NDC victory at 2004

Fresh from Canada and exuding confidence that suggests a foregone victory at the impending NDC primaries to elect a presidential candidate, defeated Election 2000 party flagbearer and former Vice President Professor John Evans Atta Mills, yesterday expressed the belief that he would lead his party to recapture power from incumbent President J. A. Kufuor in 2004. Mills, who announced his candidature for the NDC flagbearership at a press conference in Accra, seem not place much emphasis on his competitors for the primaries.

Instead, he focussed on strategies of how to regain the NDC nod as its 2004 presidential candidate, with a commitment to repeat the party’s two previous electoral victories at the next elections. He intends to do this with fresh ideas inspired by the party’s new philosophy of social democracy, he indicated. “I am therefore concerned about the increasing political polarisation in the country, where acrimonious statements and publications are fuelling an already tense national situation, coupled with hatred, pettiness and vengeance, which are taking the country nowhere”, he said.

Mills said screaming headlines in newspapers on perceived divisions within the NDC party tend to suggest that the party is divided. The former Vice President said he returned home from his recent teaching post in Canada, to the contrary, to meet a vibrant and virile party ready and poised to regain power in 2004. Mills also spoke of how he intends to run his campaign. “I put a high premium on consultation as a means for consensus building both within the party and the nation as a whole and I will give honour and recognition where it is due”, he said, adding, “once elected the flag bearer and ultimately the President, the buck stops with me!”

He also had a problem with the media’s handling of a statement he made during the campaign trail of the last elections at Ho. According to Mills, his reference to ‘consult’ his former boss and then President Jerry John Rawlings over issues, stole the headlines of various newspapers under different misinterpretations.

“The interpretations were made and varied and on several occasion I had to explain the contest in which it was made”, he complained.

Questioned on how he intends to tackle divisions between the various camps in the NDC, Professor Mills stated that the responsibility shouldn’t be on him alone, but on all party functionaries who must take it on themselves to aspire to common goals and objectives.

“ If we want to move forward we must learn to forgive, learn to respect, learn to dialogue, which shines as democracy for all and sundry but that is not what we see. For this reason, we think that even though we’re out of the scene, we should continue to maintain dialogue with the current members of government”. He asked Ghanaians to remember that they gave the NDC a mandate for a particular period in assessing their administration.

Asked whether Kwesi Botchwey would be his running mate, Mills responded: “The choice will be made after full consultation with all segments of the party. But at the end of it all, it will be based on excellence”.

On the ongoing national reconciliation process, the former Vice President said he saw nothing wrong with invitations for petitions and memoranda to the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC), but noted that his opinions on the process would eventually be known after he had studied the process the Commission would use in its works.

Mills also spoke on possible mergers with other parties, saying everything rest on his shoulders, and that the NDC would consider that as an option with the greatest amount of care, since the party would account to the people of Ghana for its actions.

He was however non-committal on his assessment of the Kufuor administration. “I don’t agree with people who just make blanket statements. President Kufuor is there to prosecute a programme; if you want to assess him, I think that it is important that your assessment is based on the programmes that he is prosecuting”, he noted.

donalddankyi@hotmail.com & adolftakyi@yahoo.com