NDC accuses NPP of applying rough tactics

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Wednesday accused the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) of using "dirty tricks," intimidation and threats in its campaign to clinch the vacant parliamentary seat in the Bimbilla bye-elections slated for Thursday.

A release issued from the Bimbilla Constituency of the NDC, which was signed by Baba Jamal, for Alhaji Huudu Yahaya, General Secretary of the party said: "The NPP is showing its ugliest face of intimidation and harassment in its desperation to win the Bimbilla seat by all means. It has gone on an over-drive and this has generated a lot of tension in the constituency."

The NDC said teachers and public officers were being transferred from the Bimbilla constituency with retrospective effect in some cases. The release cited an instance on March 11, 2002, where it said security agencies presumably arrested five university student teachers on the "orders from above", adding that but for the timely intervention of a lawyer colleague of the victims, those who were angered by the arrest would have gone on the rampage.

The NDC said it had has also learnt that the NPP had 'imported' a Kokomba chief from Saboba, who hails from a different district and kept him in Chamba, a village in the area to canvass votes for the ruling party by playing the ethnic card.

This, the NDC said, it considered "unethical, vulgar and irresponsible as Bimbilla is a hotbed for ethnic conflicts" and called for the issue of ethnicity to "be handled with extreme care in order not to inflame passions."

The party alleged the NPP had turned the campaign into money sharing business "with leading members of the NPP for doling out large sums of money to prospective voters with a view to influencing them to vote for the NPP candidate as well as for them to remove NDC flags."

The NDC said it wished to remind the leadership of the NPP that "Ghana is more important than winning an election and the peace for the people of Bimbilla was more important than winning the bye-elections.

Prince Imoro Andani, Northern Regional Minister, told the Ghana News Agency in a telephone interview that the NPP had not brought in any Komkomba chief from Saboba to Chamba, describing the NDC accusation as a figment of their imagination.

He said it was rather the NDC that was playing the tribal card adding that the NPP was too much aware of the volatile nature of the area and being in government would be the last to toy with the peace of the area. Prince Andani said the NPP unlike the NDC had no loose money to dole out adding that it was the NDC that was throwing money about.