Former President Jerry John Rawlings yesterday turned Akwatia in the Eastern Region into another "boom" arena, attacking Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the New Patriotic Party (NPP). Mr Rawlings had gone there to broker peace between factions of his party. Even though Akwatia NDC was boiling, with seeming cracks of division, the party founder spent most of his time 'hacking' the ruling party.

He described the recent congress of the NPP as a disgrace, since according to him, the elections were rigged in favour of Nana Akufo-Addo whom he described as ?another thief?.

He said when the NPP leadership saw that the elections were clearly going in favour of "Alan Cash", Lord Commey, the party's National Organiser cunningly grabbed the microphone to announce that somebody was distributing money to delegates to vote for "Alan Cash", in order to create confusion so the elections would be postponed.

According to him, the strategy used by Lord Commey worked to perfection as the NPP leadership after that announcement ?bullied? the delegates to vote for Akufo-Addo. "Alan Cash was going to be the clear winner but after Lord Commey used that strategy, everything went in favour of Nana Akufo-Addo," Rawlings alleged.

He told the NDC faithful gathered at the workers' club of Ghana Consolidated Diamond Ltd that the NPP was planning to rig the December general elections just as it did with the congress where Nana Akufo-Addo was elected the party?s presidential candidate.

"The NPP are bringing a thief to take over from another thief," he said, referring to Nana Akufo-Addo and President Kufuor, and added that there was no difference between the two."

The NPP leaders are a bunch of thieves; they are greedy and very selfish. They have looted the national coffers and see how they are shamelessly flaunting their wealth around in the midst of humiliating conditions of majority of the people".

According to the NDC founder, the party made a mistake by allowing the NPP to rig the 2004 general elections and that this time, NDC was going to be extremely vigilant to ensure that the NPP did not rig the elections again. He told the NDC loyalists to close their ranks and fight with a united front, noting that if they dissipated their energy on in-fighting and allowed the NPP to 'steal' the party, they should count themselves doomed.

"When we allow them to win these elections, we would continue to suffer and our children will also suffer".

According to the former President, though the NPP call themselves true democrats, they flagrantly abused the rights of people in the country.

"We in the NDC are not like them. We have minds, we have a heart, we have compassion, we have conscience and above all we respect God".

He indicated that the NPP was paying people huge sums of money to infiltrate the ranks and break the front of the NDC because they knew if they did not do that the NDC would win power this time. The former President alleged that he had heard that an NPP Member of Parliament (MP) had gone to see a Mallam to invoke a curse on the NDC and its parliamentary aspirant, so he would lose the forthcoming elections.

?They want to destroy our party like how they have destroyed the fibre of the society?. Mr. Rawlings said he sacrificed his life for the nation as head of state but since the NPP took over power, they had been hunting him like a criminal. He said when he was coming to Akwatia, officials of BNI sent him a text to the effect that he should take it easy, which meant that they were always monitoring him."Me de me nkwan to ho" he said in Twi to the laughter of the audience. When his attention was drawn to the correct pronunciation of ?nkwa? which means life as opposed to ?nkwan? which means soup, he also broke into laughter and said, "Menuanom, kasa no asesa; my 'nkwa' is now "nkwan".

The NDC will hold its primaries for the first time in the Akwatia constituency on Saturday and the party is seriously divided as the incumbent candidate, Baba Jamal is coming up against Kwadwo Obeng Darko, a businessman and a new person on the scene.Most of the youth in the town are supporting Baba Jamal while the party executives and founder, J.J. Rawlings are believed to be supporting the political neophyte. This has created serious tension in the town ahead of the Saturday primaries. At the meeting yesterday, Baba Jamal himself was not present but his supporters, wearing T-shirts with his picture embossed on it, were there in their numbers.

Some were angry with the founder for allegedly supporting the ?new man? because they thought only Baba Jamal could win the seat for the party. After the Akwatia meeting, Rawlings and his entourage drove to New Abirem, where he was supposed to address a similar assembly.