Accra, Dec. 16, GNA - The main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Tuesday hit back at the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and expressed doubts about the sincerity of the Government's recent reduction in prices of petroleum products and release of 5,000 drivers from jail for traffic offences.

Mr Fiifi Kwetey, Propaganda Secretary of the NDC, said in Accra that, the petrol price reduction and the release of the drivers by the Government were political gimmicks and "vote-catching pleas". At a press conference in Accra, Mr. Kwetey said the people of Ghana rather needed "a leadership that is genuine, truthful, caring, sensitive and compassionate".

Mr Kwetey said Ghanaians had found those qualities in the person of Prof. John Evans Atta Mills, the presidential candidate for the NDC, in Ghana's Election 2008.

"What the NPP leadership fails to realize until now is that the people of Ghana need no crocodile tears, nor political gimmicks, nor desperate vote catching pleas, but a leadership that is genuine, truthful, caring, sensitive and compassionate."

Neither Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills of NDC nor Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, presidential candidate of the NPP, secured the constitutional more than 50 per cent of the total ballots cast with their respective 47.92 an 49.13 per cent in presidential elections on December 7, 2008.

In real terms the NDC had 4,056,643 and the NPP obtained 4,159,439 votes, necessitating the run-off to be held on December 28. Mr Kwetey denied rumours that the NDC intended to abolish the National Health Insurance Scheme, kill Pastor Mensa Otabil, bomb the NPP office in Ho, collapse companies and sack workers of Zoomlion, among other rumours.

He urged Ghanaians to vote for Prof. Atta Mills and extolled him as "a man who will not allow greed and corruption to consume the land and jeopardize our economic well-being".

He said Prof. Atta Mills was also a man with the sound intellectual capacity to steer the reigns of governance in the right direction.