Politics of Wednesday, 20 October 2004

Source: GYE NYAME CONCORD

Mills spikes Kufuor?s administration

* They have created new victims of human rights abuse
* They want to kill NDC

Former Vice President and current presidential candidate of the NDC, Professor John Evans Atta Mills, has said that whilst trying to reconcile victims of the PNDC human rights abuses, the current government through its treatment of members of its predecessor government ended up creating a new class of victims of human rights abuse.

Other victims have also been created through acts of political vendetta and selective justice.

According to him, such victims of the ruling administration feel aggrieved and disaffected.

He was speaking at a public lecture at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, last weekend.

According to him, the opportunity that the present government had to achieve a united nation was lost when it populated its security and intelligence agencies with dissident exiles who appear to be full of hate and vengeance, and whose only talk is about revenge against former president Rawlings and the PNDC, as well as the annihilation of the NDC as a political party.

He said he has an ability to reach out to elements of both the NDC and the NPP in a way that President Kufuor is not able to, and that it is due to this that instead of pitching his record against President Kufuor?s record, NPP propagandists prefer to pitch the record of the former President against that of Kufuor.

He said the two human rights records that must be compared are his record as Vice President in the NDC government of 1997 to 2001 and President Kufuor?s record as PNDC Secretary for Local Government in the PNDC government of January to August 1982 and President of the Fourth Republic from January 2001 to date.

?I was never a part of the PNDC system. The current President was. I do not feel any obligation to reconcile with anyone from the PNDC era or to defend the human rights records of the PNDC era .The current President has that obligation, if not to defend, at least to explain?, he said.