Ho, Nov. 17, GNA - Mr. John Dramani Mahama, running mate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) presidential candidate, has said the NDC would tackle youth unemployment as a national emergency policy. "Under the next NDC government we shall use all available resources to ensure that the youth are given rewarding employment". Mr. Mahama was addressing the Ho Polytechnic branch of the Tertiary Institutions Education Network (TIEN) of the NDC in Ho on Sunday as part of his campaign tour of the region. He said the NDC would do that by revamping agriculture which employs 60 per cent of the population, link agriculture with research and agricultural institutions.

Mr Mahama said the NDC would move the nation in the right direction under the leadership of Professor John Atta Mills and that the claim by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) that it is moving forward is a hoax. "The NPP is moving in the wrong direction because it is not the motion that is important but the force that is applied to an object to move in the right direction is absent in the NPP slogan of moving forward", he said.

He said the NPP claimed to take Ghana to a "first world country" within four years and yet for a country to attain that status, it must be an emerging market which required a considerable time to achieve. Similarly, Mr. Mahama said, the NPP's promise of providing lap-top computers to every Ghanaian pupil within four years defied logic. He accused the media of covering up the wrong deeds of the Kufuor administration and advised journalists to live up to expectation. Mr Mahama said the nation needed peace before, during and after the election but that "there will be no peace without justice so the onus lies on the government to ensure the needed peace" Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, Member of Parliament for Tamale Central and National Youth Organiser of the NDC, said the 2008 election was a litmus test for Ghana's democratic dispensation. Mr. Elvis Afriyie, Deputy General Secretary of the party, said the NDC deserved the credit for laying a solid foundation for democratic governance in the country.