The General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Dr. Josiah Aryeh, has called on the people of the Western Region to reject the NPP government because they were the very people who threatened the life of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, an illustrious son of the region, through bomb throwing. He said the NPP had no sense of shame, otherwise, they would not have come to the Western Region to plead with the people to vote for them, whereas the party had threatened the life of Dr. Nkrumah, who fought and won independence for the country.

Speaking at a seminar organized for party delegates to a seminar in Sekondi last Friday, Dr. Aryeh said the NPP had a track record of violence. He mentioned some ministers of the current government whose fathers, he alleged, were the worst offenders when it came to bomb throwing and other forms of violence.

The General Secretary further told the delegates who attended the seminar sponsored by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) that, Ghanaians would be making a big mistake it they voted for the NPP to retain power.

He noted that notwithstanding the enviable role the NDC was playing as an opposition party by constantly keeping the NPP government on its toes, Ghana was still considered, ? sick man in Africa? because of the amateurish manner in which the government had been handling its international monetary transactions.

He reiterated that the IFC loan scam and the ongoing CNTCI loan saga alone showed that the government was incompetent when it came to international financial negotiations. ?This NPP government has the tendency of contracting bad loans and we will not sit down for it to continue,? he said.

Dr. Aryeh, who was flanked by Dr. Farouk Braimah, NDC Propaganda Secretary and the acting regional party Chairman, Madam Tabitha Quaye, also called on the electorate to do away with the mentality that they or their parents belonged to a certain political tradition and would always vote for one party even if it was performing poorly.

?We must change that mentality and vote for a party that has good policies to transform the county,? Dr. Aryeh urged. He added that, since coming to power, the NPP government had succeeded in destroying the education system through astronomical increases in school fees, especially for law and medicine.

This alone, he continued, meant that the NPP government was building a wall between the rich and the poor, which would make the latter find it difficult to educate their children to a high level. Dr. Aryeh regretted that despite all these bad policies by the government, some people were still supporting it.

He called on the electorate in the Western Region to have a retrospective look at what the NPP did to Dr. Nkrumah and surrender their votes to Prof. Atta Mills, who grew up in the region and, therefore, had its development dear to his heart.

To him, there was nothing wrong if the electorate in both the Central and Western Regions decided to vote for Mills because all over the world, presidential candidates had their home regions as their strongholds.

Mr. Kwesi Jonah, who represented the IEA, called on the NDC to judiciously utilize the money that would be given them by his institution to strengthen the party.

He said it was not only the NDC which they would support financially, but other parties which had representation in Parliament.

Later, in an interview with the press, Mr. Jonah said all the parties would be given $25,000 each to boost their campaigns.

In addition to this, he said airtime would be bought for them to enable the parties sell their policies to the electorate.

He added that about seven political parties in the Netherlands were sponsoring the programme.