It appears President John Evans Atta Mills is trying by hook or by crook to retain power in the 2012 general elections.

He has commissioned a team of experts and tasked it to help devise ways and means to enable him to win the upcoming election slated for December.

Among the strategies the President is adopting is to create confusion in strongholds of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), especially in the Ashanti Region, before and during the general elections.

To start with the impending biometric voter registration, the NDC hatched the plot to cause artificial shortage of registration materials, cause anarchy and disturbances during registration, and unofficially reduce the number of days for the registration in the Ashanti Region, according to NDC position paper intercepted by DAILY GUIDE.

The objective, as captured in the document, is to set out strategies that can be followed before and within year 2012 to enable Prof. Mills to capture an easy victory over the NPP in December, 2012.

The highly confidential report, according to Castle sources, was tabled before the President somewhere early this year for consideration on the strategies to adopt in the upcoming elections because the NPP was said to be gaining grounds with the Alfred Woyome judgment debt scandal.

That, they said, was because the opposition party intended to use it as a campaign message.

In the Ashanti Region, for instance, a strategy was devised to reduce the number of registered voters since in their opinion “votes from this region have always posed a threat to the NDC”.

Quite apart from that, they stressed the belief that reducing the votes from Ashanti Region was a pre-requisite for winning election 2012.

This was part of reasons the group commissioned for the project in the secret document stated that rigging was inevitable, noting that “to win election 2012, to be fair is not an option, but the biometric registration and verification systems limit the abuse of incumbency especially to rig”.

For this reason, it was stated in the document that “the only effective way to rig is at registration” and that “more people both qualified and unqualified should be motivated, enticed to register in NDC strongholds and discourage registration especially in the Ashanti region, the opposition stronghold”.

The group believed that “elections are won and lost on the day of election”, emphasising, “Let’s infiltrate the officials with NDC sympathizers; their target in NDC strongholds should be to ease the system but to frustrate votes in NPP strongholds.”

Drafters of the reports had this to write about the Ashanti Region, “Ashanti region: the higher they register people in Ashanti the greater the threat for NDC” and that “discouraging registration in Ashanti region is not only prudent but a necessity”.

Members of the group stressed the need to cause artificial “shortage of registration materials, cause anarchy and disturbance during registration, unofficially reduce the number of days registration in Ashanti region especially in the hinterlands where they know less”.

They also intend to financially influence people not to register and the suggestion of a possible pilot system in the region during the registration process.

“The marked target of 35 percent of votes in Ashanti region should be pursued with all seriousness to win election 2012, the 62.32percent in Upper West, 65.55percent in Upper East 51.92percent in Western region, 86.06percent in Volta region and 61.61percent in Northern region should be protected with all jealousy whilst the NDC pursue the other votes vigorously. Every single vote is important having in mind the very slim margin in 2008,” stated the document.

It was thought that figures of the recently-held population census should be bloated in regions that tilted towards the NDC including the Volta, Upper East and West and the Northern regions, the reason for which Government Statistician Dr Grace Bediako was booted out of office without cause.

Part of the plan was to allow more people into the country, especially during the period of registration, and birth certificates secured for foreigners in border towns and the under age to enable them to register and vote.

There also seemed to be a game plan to create more constituencies in especially border regions. The documents stated, “The entrants should be around 500,000. This number should carefully be distributed to the four border regions enlisted Volta, Upper East, Upper West, Northern region. Not only should you make sure they register but also will vote.”

The document was copied to Vice President John Mahama, NDC General Secretary Johnson Asiedu Nketia, National Chairman Dr Kwabena Adjei, and Lt. Col Larry Gbevlo-Lartey (rtd), National Security Co-ordinator.