NPP NOT PREPARING FOR RUN-OFF (PAGE 14)

A COPENHAGEN-based Ghanaian lawyer, Mr Joseph Boateng, has said the New Patriotic Party (NPP) is not preparing for a run-off in the December presidential election as some of the party's opponents believe.
He emphasised that the NPP was sure of clinching a "one-touch victory" and those who believed that they could use political alliances to threaten that party in a run-off would be daydreaming.
Mr Boateng stated this when he presented 700 NPP T-shirts, valued at GH¢2,100, and cash of GH¢1,000 to the Sene Constituency branch of the NPP at a ceremony at Kwame Danso.
The items and the money are to boost the party’s campaign towards the general election.
In the 2004 elections the NDC won by over 13,000 votes in the Sene Constituency but the NPP has vowed to wrest the seat from the NDC in December.
Mr Boateng, who is a citizen of the Brong Ahafo Region, said the candidature of Nana Akufo-Addo and the aggressive campaign he and the NPP had launched had sent fears down the spines of the NDC which had resorted to lies and vicious attacks to save its dwindling image.
He said Ghana's international reputation had shot up under the NPP and so it was important that Ghanaians retained the party in power to build on it.
Mr Boateng said all over Europe Ghana was rated very high among other Africa countries in its democratic development and economic policies.
He indicated that he and other friends were helping in diverse ways to get some constituencies on the right footing for the elections.
He promised to extend similar assistance to six other constituencies in the Brong Ahafo and Ashanti regions before the general election.
The Brong Ahafo Regional Secretary of the NPP, Mr A.K. Kusi, commended Mr Boateng for the assistance, which he said would go a long way to get the party in full gear for the battle ahead.
He said even though the NDC won in the constituency in both the parliamentary and presidential elections of 2004, its incumbent MP had not done anything meaningful to get the development of the area on course.
Mr Kusi promised that the NPP leadership in the region was working hard with the constituency executives to win in all the constituencies.
The Sene District Chief Executive (DCE), Mr Ernest Buanya Mensah, said the support from Mr Boateng was one of the best things to happen to the constituency since the campaign took off.
He said the NDC was in a state of disorder because the NPP's record in government was drawing a number of NDC members into the NPP family.
Present was the NPP parliamentary aspirant for Sene, Mr Mohammed Belinyi Abdullah.