As the NDC Presidential primaries slated for this December approaches, four big guns are shoving and casting insinuations at each other, each claiming to have won the race in advance. The four are Profesor Evans Atta Mills, Ekow Spio Garbrah, Eddie Annan and Iddrisu Mahama.

Everyone of them has claimed that he is the only one capable of leading the country’s largest opposition to victory. All is therefore set for a grand battle over who leads the party in 2008.

Nii Lante Vanderpuije, Press Secretary of NDC’s twice defeated flagbearer, John Evans Atta Mills, says the electoral campaign that has been stared by the other three aspirants is an exercise in futility. He explained that since no delegate has been chosen yet, there is absolutely no need for the other aspiring candidates to go to the grassroots and described it as a piece of public relations gimmick.

“No delegate has been chosen yet, they would come up when it is about a month to the election, so when you go now, who are you going to talk to? Those people who have started, it is because they are not known in the party,” he noted. Nii Lante, a former parliamentary aspirant for the Odododiodoo Constituency, said in an interview with The heritage that Prof Mils has been there and seen it all before and would not rush into getting off his campaign, “because he is already known in the party.”

“Prof. does not need to waste too much energy on thing like this. He needs to reserve all those energies for the 2008 election. These people are only doing self-introduction to the members of the party,” he said. He stated that Prof’s campaign is focusing on and looking beyond the primaries to the 2008 election and sees none of the other three aspirants who have publicly declared, Mr Ekow Spio Garbrah, Mr Eddie Annan and Mahama Iddrisu, capable of matching him seriously at the party’s congress in December this year.

He said, as far as the NDC is concerned, the University Professor-turned politician has worked more than any of the three aspirants, although he has lost two electoral battles. Nii Vanderpuije reacted sharply to comments in the public domain that the Prof would lose another election, if he was chosen as the NDC flagbearer for the third time.

“How long did it take Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade to be elected into the high office? So that does not come in at all. We are very sure that he is going to win the next election,” he explained. To all intents and purposes, the slot for the opposition NDC is expected to be one fit for the gods, at the time the party hopes to present its best arsenal for the next election.

Nii Vandepuije’s comments come in the wake of two of the presidential hopefuls, Alhaji Iddrisu Mahama and Mr. Eddie Annan’s determination to give the primaries their best shot. As the longest serving Defence Minister in Ghana’s history, Alhaji Iddrisu Mahama intends to reconcile the Obed-led Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) to form a dreadful opposition for the NPP in 2008. He says, “I will do all I can to bring them (defected members) back to the fold; if I don’t succeed it would be a threat to the party (NDC). Parties deal with numbers”.

Iddrisu Mahama, a former Defence Minister condemned some members of the party who were distributing monies to people, and said his energies would rather be aimed at conscientising people to come into the party. “Another interesting thing is that people are distributing huge sums of money. Most of us don’t realize that the more resources you put in, the more you encourage corruption to a certain level”, he argued.

Alhaji Mahama would be competing for the party’s most-influential position, the presidential candidature, four years on after losing the chairmanship race to Dr. Obed Asamoah in 2002, in what many suspected there was a foul play.

Another front-runner, Eddie Annan, one of the hardworking members of the NDC has also laid a strong claim to the slot. The business mogul would be relying heavily on his resources as his conduit to ascend to the party’s topmost position. Moneyed Annan comes up at the time the NDC is not financially stable; this could prove critical when the party goes to congress in December.

Mr. Ekow Spio Garbrah is another world-beater who would pose threat to the other aspirants at the primaries. In fact, Nii Lante Vanderpuije has once acknowledged the fact that Mr. Spio Garbrah has the pedigree to assume that revered position in the party, having served in various capacities in the NDC regimes.

“He is a capable person and can serve in any capacity. This shows the pedigree of the NDC,” he told this paper. Spio, a former minister of education who is based in London, enjoys the support of the former President Jerry Rawlings, a decision which could rob the Professor of some votes at the congress.

Now the head of the West African Telecommunications, Spio said in an interaction with journalists recently in Ghana, the NDC needs a formidable candidate with the right strategy to help it win back political power and believes he is the right person who would lead the NDC back to the Castle in 2008.

The opposition NDC is bracing up for the party’s congress which comes off this December. Political scientists see it as a make or break affair for the main opposition which has some of its members defecting to the Democratic Freedom Party (DFP).