Accra, Nov. 29, GNA - Mr Kwabena Agyei Agyepong, a New Patriotic Party (NPP) Flag bearer aspirant has pledged to offer the party and Ghana a leadership of competence, compassion, commitment and courage. He said: "I pledge a leadership that understands people, loves people and help people to become what God created them to be. The people's welfare is my concern."

"Mine is a strong desire to serve the people with a clear conscience, pure motives and a solid character." Mr Agyepong made the pledge when speaking to Ghana News Agency in Accra on the eve of elections to elect delegates from the constituencies to the Special National Delegates Congress to elect a flag bearer on December 22.

He explained that the decision to contest for the flag bearership of the party was to put at its disposal the accumulated knowledge, expertise, energy, talent and his life to enable it win and safeguard gains the NPP Government had achieved in the past seven years. To the delegates, Mr Agyepong said: "Election 2008 is about the future of our political tradition and the country. We need to usher in a new generation of leadership that would guarantee the sustenance of our tradition for several decades to come."

He said to achieve middle income status by 2015 and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Ghana needed a leadership that was intensely action-oriented, passionately mission-minded, demanding of results and had no time for bureaucratic inertia and chases progress, adding, "I am ready to provide that kind of leadership."

Mr Agyepong said he intended to pursue an aggressive agricultural policy by offering long term risk capital to farmers to enable them expand and modernise with state-of-the-art technology. In addition, he said the value chain would be revamped through agro-processing ventures at the farm gate to take post harvest and marketing burden off the back of the hard working farmers.