GRi Press Review Ghana 07 - 11 - 2000
NPP will declare results
Rawlings asks for 66% votes
Ghost endorses Dan Lartey's nomination
SFO probe into SSNIT inadequate - UGM
Driver, mate arrested
I thought it was the end
NDC worried over hooting
Kufuor speaks on Aliens compliance order
Bloated register is intentional
Foreign press worse than Ghanaian media
NPP will declare results
NPP's National Campagin Manager, Mr Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, insists that
the party will announce its election results from all polling stations to
ensure that the process is free and fair, reports the Statesman in a front-page
lead story.
Reacting to allegations made by Prof. Kofi Awoonor NDC Vice Chairman
that the NPP intends to disrupt the democratic process by the action and are
plotting to unleash violence if they lose, Obetsebi-Lamptey said the law allows
for the declaration and the NPP will do so through every medium, including the
internet, for the world to know the clear choice of Ghanaians."
The NPP he said is a law abiding party which will defend its rights
within the law, adding that the "Electoral laws are clear and in some
cases universal. When a result is announced at a polling station it becomes
public and may be published, quoted and declared by anyone in whatever
media."
The National Vice-Chairman said the NPP let Ghanaians down in 1996 by
not being properly organised to announce results and allowed days of silence
during which the announcements of results ceased but will this time leave
nothing to chance.
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Rawlings asks for 66% votes
The President, Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings have asked Ghanaians to
give the NDC an above 60 per cent victory in the forthcoming presidential
elections, reports the Ghanaian Democrat.
"Please we look at your numbers and we know we are going to win. I
don't want a simple 51 per cent victory; I don't want 52 per cent victory. Give
me 60 to 66 per cent victory," President Rawlings told thousands of party
supporters at a regional rally at Koforidua over the weekend.
He urged the supporters to bury any differences they might have with
the MPs and vote the NDC's choices for the sake of the party.
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Ghost endorses Dan Lartey's nomination
The Ghanaian Times reports in its banner story that some of the people
who endorsed Mr Dan Lartey's nomination as the presidential candidate of the
Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP) do not exist.
One of the endorsers at least is known to have died in 1998 while many
could not be traced to their addresses according to investigations conducted by
the paper.
Among the 220 supporters who initialled for Mr Lartey's nomination,
Appele Ennu, from Jomoro died two years ago, while another, Alex Borsie of Box
48 had his address going to one Mrs. Faustina Baidoo who claimed no knowledge
of Bortsie. Several others from other constituencies across the regions could
not be traced.
Mr Lartey when contacted wondered the paper's rationale behind the
search.
He however denied ever giving false information on his nomination form
to the Electoral Commission (EC), with party General Secretary, blaming the EC
for not providing them with a copy of the voters register to cross-check
information provided by those nominating the presidential candidate.
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SFO probe into SSNIT inadequate - UGM
The United Ghana Movement (UGM) have called for the establishment of a
committee of enquiry to probe allegations of malfeasance levelled against some
top members of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT).
According to the Daily Graphic, it said the Serious Fraud Office’s
(SFO) enquiry into the allegations, were inadequate and inappropriate.
Dr Charles Wereko-Brobby, Presidential candidate of the UGM speaking at
a news conference in Accra, said questions regarding remit and scope of SFO's
investigations and the reinstatement of SSNIT staff connected with Ghana
Industrial Estate Limited (GICEL) are still hanging.
He expressed similar sentiments about project corruption and the basis
for the promised review and revamping of the current management of the Trust.
He spoke of the need for a much wider scope of enquiry into the whole
operations of SSNIT including the period of its establishment and intimated
that the most appropriate forum for this would be a Committee of Investigation
established under the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament (PAC).
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Driver, mate arrested
The Daily Graphic in its lead story says the driver of the Nissan Urvan
bus who allegedly caused the accident involving the Presidential convoy on the
Accra-Tema Motorway on October 29 has been arrested together with his mate,
following a tip-off by one of the passengers on board the vehicle at the time.
Daniel Dawutey Chakitey, 30, the driver and his mate, Samuel Kwabena
Cudjoe, 20, were arrested at Somanya in the Eastern Region on Sunday November
5.
The bus, with registration number ER 7512 C, has also been impounded.
According to Inspector Kwaku Dzakpata, in charge of operations at
Police CID Headquarters, Chakitey who shuttles between Somanya, Ashaiman, Kpong
and Koforidua, had arrived at Ashaiman on the said occasion and was making a
return trip there from Accra when the incident occurred.
He said he ran away because he got scared.
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I thought it was the end
The First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, in her first public
reaction to Sunday's accident says she thought that was going to be her end.
"I thought it was the end," she told the Ghana News Agency in
response to a question on how she felt during the accident when a 14-member
royal delegation from Tema, Kpone and Katamanso Traditional Councils from the
Greater Accra Region paid her a visit.
"God saved us. I can't explain why we are alive and four are dead.
We need to pray for those who have lost their lives".
Nana Konadu, whose left wrist was plastered, told the council that she
was however fine except for a few body pains.
She corrected press reports that said they were coming from Akosombo
stating that they were then heading towards there, adding that it was the
accident resulted in the position they car was found and gave the wrong
perception.
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NDC worried over hooting
The Guide writes on its front-page that the hierarchy of the ruling NDC
now seems worried about the hooting that have been greeting them wherever they
go and have started pointing accusing fingers at the NPP for intentionally
instigating and organising children to do so at NDC convoy.
Vice President Prof. Evans Atta Mills and Sports Minister, Enoch T.
Mensah are said to have accordingly condemned such acts at Koforidua where the
party followers suffered another public ridicule during a procession by party
supporters.
The leadership of the party warned that the NDC will not allow the
vocal minority to silence the silent majority.
"We will not sit for a few people who are misguided, people who
have inordinate ambitions to disrupt the process that we have begun", Vice
President Mills is reported to have warned.
He urged the party's supporters to stand up for their rights and not
allow the minority to subdue them adding that the silent majority will want to
make sure that their voices are heard for once in their civic responsibilities.
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Kufuor speaks on Aliens compliance order
The Presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has told
the chiefs and elders of Kasoa that the Aliens Compliance Order of the 1970s is
a thing of the past and under no circumstance will a government of the NPP
re-introduce it.
He said Ghana is a signatory to an Economic Community of West Africa
States (ECOWAS) protocol that allows citizens of member countries to move about
and settle wherever they want to pursue their livelihood.
The NPP he said sees all Zongo residents as vital segments in shaping
the nation's economy and therefore assured them that an NPP government will
co-operate with them.
He said it is to emphasise this point that the party selected a running
mate who hails from the North and happens to be a Zongo boy.
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Bloated register is intentional
A front-page capture of the Crusading Guide quotes one Nana Kwabena
Owusu Afrifa, the Abontendomhene of Amenako, a suburb of Kumasi, as saying that
the bloating of the voters register by 1.5 million cannot be unintentional and
therefore the perpetrators have their reason.
He said in 1992 when the number of bloating was estimated at two
million and above, there was a corresponding rigging which gave room for
publication of the opposition's 'Stolen Verdict' while complaints of bloating
in 1996 could not make the election rigging free.
Nana in a statement made available to the paper said in either case the
EC came out that the polling was cleared of malpractices, but at the end there
was suspected fraud.
He decried some form of registration, which he said, "were
clandestinely going on" in some urban and rural areas and intoned that
these were happening because the EC had failed to do its work very well.
He said it will therefore be "an irony of history" if a third
rigging takes place in three consecutive election years in the history of the
nation and suggested that the electoral body meets the opposition parties to
come out with a mutual conclusion to solve the problem.
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Foreign press worse than Ghanaian media
The President Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings is reported in the lead
story of the Ghanaian Chronicle to have given the foreign press a bashing
during a meeting with security personnel in reaction to stories that it had
carried on him.
"Some of Ghana's newspapers tell lies, but the foreign ones are
dangerous", President Rawlings is reported to have stated in reference to
his rancorous encounter with the press in Scotland during his visit there in
mid-September, this year.
"An incident took place in the United Kingdom. I arrived in
Scotland to see a shocking story about Ghana on the front pages of their
newspapers. Some nonsense!" President Rawlings is reported to have voiced,
adding that, "if you think Ghana papers lie, the foreign ones are
dangerous."
The leader of the nation recounted the Scottish press' version of the
story that said one Bob Kerr, 45, working in Ghana for the International
Hospitals Groups, was killed after his Nissan Jeep collided head-on with a
taxi.
He said one of the papers, The Scotsman of September 14, said Mrs Ruth
Kerr said she believed that her husband’s extensive injuries did not match with
the local pathologist report.
In the story, which President Rawlings had denied not to be factual,
Ruth, Ker's wife claimed also that the body was also left unattended in the
mortuary with ants running on it.
“I told them this kind of brutality will not happen Ghana. So the
papers were laying.”
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