Hooligans of the NPP, on Wednesday, hurled stones into a gathering of NDC supporters and sympathizers who had gathered to listen to Former President JJ Rawlings at a mammoth rally in Akim Oda, during Rawlings' campaign tour of the Eastern region.

The missiles fell short of their intended target, which was President Rawlings. But two persons who were not so lucky and sustained very serious injury on their faces were rushed off to hospital bleeding. The Police have been informed and are presumably working to arrest the culprits.

It may, in fact, be necessary to mention that, the NDC, which is the main opposition party is experiencing a lot of provocation from the NPP and its activists as we travel around the country campaigning for the December 7, 2004, elections. Very recently a government official, the District Chief Executive of Bongo, in the Upper East region, provocatively drove his car towards a large gathering of NDC supporters and sympathizers which nearly resulted in a nasty incident but for the timely intervention by the Former President who was addressing the crowd at that material moment. Professor Mills, the Presidential Candidate of the NDC has also had his share of such provocation by the NPP during his tour of the Volta region.

Additionally, campaign programmes for President Kufuor and his vice President have been redesigned and rescheduled from time to time to cause maximum interference with programmes of both President Rawlings and Professor Mills.

We believe that if Mr. Kufuor and his NPP are confident of genuine victory they would not be misconducting themselves in this way, especially their spending of billions of cedis buying voter identity cards and expensive advertising material, including aircrafts to drop leaflets of Mr. Kufuor.

These are not healthy developments and we sincerely hope that these will not degenerate into more serious provocations to the point of disturbing the impending elections.

VICTOR SMITH

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS,