With five months to the NPP's congress to elect a flagbearer, the interested candidates are not only criss-crossing the country to campaign for votes.

Some of them or their supporters are also throwing mud at one another. Out-going Trade Minister, Alan Kyeremanten has already suffered some bad press in the past few months with complaints of some wrongdoing currently before CHRAJ.

But over the weekend another form of campaigning started, targeting Foreign Minister Nana Akuffo Addo.

A damning text message, circulated in some circles, is raising serious questions about the candidature of Nana Akufo-Addo. The text message, whose source is not yet known, alleges that the out-going Foreign Minister is arrogant and has shown gross incompetence in his handling of the killing of 44 Ghanaians in The Gambia.

The anonymous 'texter' whose phone has since been switched off says Nana Akufo-Addo is not good enough to succeed President Kufuor.

But that's not all; a member of his team and editor of the statesman newspaper, Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko has also been accused of arrogance.

Otchere-Darko who said he had personally seen the text message, said an earlier one was later expanded and then sent out from the anonymous source, accusing Nana Akufo-Addo of defending drug dealers.

He told Joy News he was not surprised either in the allegation because it was not new, or the effect it was intended to achieve, which he suspected was to demean Nana Akufo-Addo.

According to Gabby, it would be unrealistic for anyone to run for the highest office of the land and not expect that such mud would be fling in his direction, but he advised that since this is an internal party position, he expected that issues rather than pettiness would dominate debates.

“The important thing is that this is a very intense campaign and we are hoping that the issues that would be brought up would be issues, not really things that you cannot substantiate. I mean if you say for instance the man has been incompetent…if you like, in finding a solution to the Gambian issue, that is an issue I’m sure he can respond to, but other mudslinging, the very dirty campaign, it gives the impression as if you have nothing to say about the man so you just want to discredit him. The thing is it’s very dangerous in internal politics and I think that it is part of Nana Addo’s campaign to respond to these things.”