Mills Drops John

THE NATIONAL Democratic Congress (NDC) has taken a weird decision on its running mate, John Dramani Mahama, dropping his image from the party's campaign materials with less than a month to go for the December 7 general elections.

The party has swapped John's images with that of the United States' President-elect, Barack Husain Obama, as if the latter was the party's new running mate.

As at the time of filing this story, the NDC has already placed a huge banner bearing smiling portraits of Obama and Prof. Mills atop its National Headquarters in Accra and also printed campaign T-shirts and paraphernalia bearing the pictures of Barack Obama and Atta Mills.

The party has as well adopted a new slogan: “Obama Nie, Atta Mills Nie”, which translates 'This is Obama: This is Atta Mills' and printed it on its new campaign materials.

Some NDC big-wigs were seen frantically clinching on to the Obama-Mills campaign materials and shoving them into the booth of vehicles, apparently getting ready for massive distribution.

Already, the NDC flag-bearer has suffered visibility challenges and pundits have expressed doubts as to weather he had not been drowned by John Mahama, his affable running mate and the founder of his party, ex-president Jerry Rawlings.

The Mills campaign team's decision to replace the images of John with that of Obama has been interpreted as a knee-jerk response to a failed publicity strategy.

The move has also been dismissed as a cheap way of gaining publicity since the message has no bearing on the current social, economic and political challenges of Ghana.

In a related development, a member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) campaign team, Prof. Mike Oquaye has slammed the NDC for attempting to gain political credit from the historic victory of Barack Obama.

Prof. Oquaye told Metro TV in Accra that Obama and Nana Addo are friends and have a one-on-one relationship, thus the NDC should not behave as if the NPP would be adversely affected by Obama's victory.

He stated that Obama does not even know Prof. Mills and rubbished an assertion that the NDC thinks the party's chances in the December polls is tied to that of Obama's victory.

By Halifax Ansah-Addo