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Opinions of Thursday, 17 October 2019

Columnist: Kofi Thompson

NDC must focus on how to outsmart NPP through creative thinking - Not boot-for-boot violence

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Sometimes it is pretty hard to understand the leadership of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). Why waste time and energy whining about the fact that some of the ruling New Patriotic Party's (NPP) hardliners apparently plan to replicate, nationwide, a strategy-of-intimidation. It takes two to tango - there will be no election day violence if the NDC's members and supporters do not engage in running skirmishes with members and supporters of the ruling NPP.

Furthermore, according to bush-telegraph sources, the said strategy-of-intimidation is the selfsame one employed to beat up innocent people, in the vicinity of the Ayawaso West Wougon Presbyterian Church School polling station, during the by-election to elect a replacement for the late Hon. Kyremateng Agyarko (who died in America after a short illness) who hitherto had been the Member of Parliament for the Ayawaso West Wougon constituency?

Additionally, it is said by some that what the NPP's hardliners fear the most, is international opprobrium. If that indeed is the case, then what the NDC ought to do, if it wants to outsmart the NPP's uncouth and verbally-aggressive Bernard Antwi-Boasiakos, is to use its networks-of-contacts to find sponsors willing to fund the purchase of smartphones (all of them with three extra batteries each), for donation to CODEO - the election-monitoring civil society organisation.

That will enable trained Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) volunteers to video and live stream the casting of votes and counting of votes in polling stations across Ghana, which will be used for the November 2020 presidential and parliamentary elections, on sundry social media online platforms - from the beginning of voting in the morning, to the counting of votes after the evening polling station closing time. Simple. The NDC must focus on how to outsmart the NPP through creative thinking - not boot-for-boot violence. Haaba.