POLITICAL ATMOSPHERE SLOWLY WARMING UP

Now the contest for the presidency has become clearer since the four major parties have elected their flag bearers. The politicking is underway and the heat is slowly creeping into the atmosphere. There is a lot at stake and the all the side have not hidden their preparedness to battle very hard if that is what it will take to achieve success. Prof. Atta Mills has quickly gone on the offensive by calling on Akuffo-Addo to stop abusing incumbency as well as the use of public resources to run his campaign. The NDC presidential candidate has also turned on the heat by issuing a strongly worded statement to the government and the Electoral Commission not to repeat the aberrations of the 2004 elections when the ruling part declared itself the winner of the polls. This statement was in light of the huge problems that have resulted from the badly run Kenyan Elections. Prof. Mills has dawn many parallels about what happened in 2004 and what is happening in Kenya now. The NPP media machinery including the bought, co-opted, and the engaged swung into action and attacked the NDC for “beating war drums”. You would think the NDC had called for a war if you dropped from Mars and didn’t know what the NPP and their media collaborators were made of. Akuffo Addo has also had his share o the heat. When the Upper East situation flared up, it alleged that he was the cause of it having gone and promised to help one of the feuding parting to prevail if he became president. The allegation festered for a while and when he decided to respond, he spoke in a tone that accentuated the perception that he was arrogant. Even the mundane and unexciting Jonh Mahama has had reason to be excitable when it was suggested in the media that Paa Kwesi Ndoum , the Presidential candidate of the CPP had started negotiations with the PNC for a possible alliance of the Nkrumahist forces. The force of the denial from the PNC camp suggested that it will take some doing before Nkrumahist unity could be achieved. After a long silence Rawlings finally spoke and the media reports suggested that his wrath was as much against the NPP as it was against one of his lieutenants. His suggestion that the altercation during the NPP congress was designed to rig the election for Akuffo Addo has fed into the NPP propaganda that the NDC and Rawlings are scared of Akuffo-Addo. These are very early days, however everything points to a hotly contested election this year.