Kufuor, Mills Calendar Generates Controversy

INNOCUOUS BUT striking post-election political calendar depicting the defeat and mock burial of the largest opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has generated a lot of controversy as to the timeliness and importance of such a calendar on the market.

A section of Ghanaians interviewed in Accra and Kumasi by Daily Guide were sharply divided over the timeliness and importance of such a calendar. These calendars which appeared on the market, as soon as NDC was declared loser in the just-ended general elections, sold like hot cakes, as information reaching Daily Guide noted that, everyday, 17, 000 copies of the calendars are sold out.

In one such calendar, the Minister of Finance, Mr Yaw Osafo Maafo and the Minister of Defence, Hon Dr Kwame Addo-Kufuor are depicted, through a computer-generation, carrying the coffin of NDC to the cemetery, while the general-secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr Dan Botwe, shows his excitement, by the coffin.

On the other hand, Mrs Konadu Agyeman and certain top shots of the NDC are seen weeping bitterly at the graveside of the party.

One other calendar also depicts the presidential candidate of NPP, Mr J.A. Kufuor, who is the sitting President, punching his main challenger, Prof John Atta Mills, NDC flagbearer, to the extent that NDC?s Atta Mills is seen bleeding profusely and has become helpless.

A number of residents in Accra Daily Guide interacted with did not see the relevance of the calendar, since it only goes to inflame passions and divide Ghanaians, the more.

A dealer in stationery who only gave her name as Margaret, described the calendar as complete nonsense, because it does not offer any education or better information, but only to taunt NDC supporters, and this, she observed, would go to polarize the nation.

Edward Benhin, a driver at the Kaneshie-Mamprobi lorry station noted, ?Look at where we have come in our democratic dispensation. We have come very far, and need to tolerate one another, and live together as one people?.

According to Benhin, he does not see it as reconciliatory, because the vanquished side is at the receiving end of all manners of taunt, and will bring more division and antagonism between Ghanaians. Two ladies, Grace and Joyce, also criticised the calendar, citing unity as one thing the calendar defeats.