Mills Strikes At Botchwey Again

The campaign team of Prof. John Evans Atta Mills, has stated that come what may, the Prof. is the one that delegates are going to cast their massive votes for, on December 21, 2002.

They said they have noted with great interest the competitive spirit that Mills' counterpart, Dr. Kwesi Botchwey has brought into the party's search for a presidential candidate for the 2004 General Elections, but feel unperturbed.

According to them, Prof. Mills remains unshaken by the seeming warmth that the former minister of Finance has brought into the party's flagbeareship race.

A spokesman for the team who revealed this to theDaily Guide last Friday maintained that they appreciate the spirit with which Botchwey entered the race, because he came in late; and had to double his campaign efforts in order to catch up with Mills, since the Prof. was already ahead in terms of exposure to the electorate, having been a former Vice- President and Presidential candidate of the NDC in the 2000 general elections.

The Mills Team has meanwhile, attacked Dr. Botchwey for allegedly advocating the establishment of two main political parties in the country.

Quoting the former Finance Minister, and former Associate Professor of Harvard College in the US as having said that for strategic reasons, there must be only two dominant political parties in the country, the Mills campaign Team said that's selfish and impractical in this part of the world.

Replying, the Mills campaign team countered that Dr. Botchwey's view does not hold water. This is because for strategic reasons there is the need to have a multiplicity of political parties so that in the event of an electoral deadlock, the other parties could form alliances as witnessed in the last elections.

“This pronouncement by Botchwey on Joy FM Front –Page programme, recently shot us all in the foot” they stressed, Turning to his bachelor status, the Mills Team noted that “wives play crucial roles in moulding the president since they may advise him on appointments, secondments and even in contract awards, so if a president has no wife, who would advise him on these, then how is he going to function? adding “Mills already has a wife”.

What about Botchwey's comments that some do not even know how the NDC party was founded?

In any field of endeavour, there are those who play crucial rules in the realisation of an organisation's objectives. In the building of political party structures too, we have what we call meritocracy and longevity.

It's not a question of when did one join the party, but what role one plays at certain stages in the party is what is material. Botchwey might have started when the party began, but he left while some of us remained, they argued.

The team denied that Botchwey's differences with Rawlings was over the way and manner the economy was being interfered with by Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata the former chief executive of GNPC that made him to resign from office in 1995.

They stated that it was rather the fear that the former president entertained that his Finance Minister might have compromised the security of the state by his relationship with a Canadian High Commissioner to Ghana, that sparked bad blood between him and the former president.

They claifmed that it was also never true that it was Botchwey who brought Prof. Atta Mills to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as commissioner; rather, it was Mr. Ato Ahwoi.