Former Minister for Trade, Industry, Private Sector Development and President's Special Initiatives, Mr. Alan Kyeremanten, moved swiftly last Friday to avert what could have possibly led to a clash between his campaign team and that of Vice-President Alhaji Aliu Mahama. According to The Independent newspaper, the clash between the two campaign teams could have been sparked off by an utterance purported to have been made by one Prince Armah, who is the Western Region Co-ordinator of Mr. Alan Kyeremanten's campaign team. Prince Armah was reported to have made a statement that sought to slander the image of Vice President Aliu Mahama by describing him as a weak person, and calling on delegates of the party not to vote for the Vice President to lead the party to the 2008 general election. That claim was carried by The Chronicle last week. Prince Armah was also reported to have said that Alhaji Aliu Mahama could not speak any of the main Akan languages and was not articulate enough to match NDC's Prof. John Evans Atta Mills if it ever came to a debate between presidential candidates. These statements, according to the Independent, did not go down well with the Vice President's campaign team, which quickly began to look for “arsenals” to throw at Prince Armah? The Independent said no sooner had they began the search when Mr. Kyeremanten came out to clear the air on the matter. In an interview with the Independent, Mr. Kyerematen said that "Nobody had mandated Prince Armah to speak on behalf of the Alan Kyeremanten campaign team." He described the statements as unfortunate, but added that, when he contacted Prince Armah, he denied ever uttering the words the newspaper attributed to him. The former Minister reportedly told The Independent that, due to the seriousness of the matter and given the fact that he respects the Vice-President, he had decided to contact him (Aliu) to explain the circumstances to him and to formally apologise to him for the embarrassment caused him. He said, he was not surprised that the newspaper pitched him against the Vice President, because in recent times some media houses had made it their stock in trade to always smear him (Alan) at the slightest opportunity. Earlier, representatives of Aliu's campaign team had condemned the utterances, and described them as having the potential of destroying the smooth campaign desired by all Ghanaians. They said, the Vice-President has been speaking to Ghanaians for the past six years and his audience understand him anyway, adding that it is unfortunate that somebody would want to make the speaking of local dialects an issue in NPP's politics. According to them, Ghana is a unitary state, hence they called on all Ghanaians to condemn attempts by anybody to divide the country into tribal or dialect speaking entities. "We are not in a federal state where we have to identify people by dialects," the paper quotes Aliu's campaign team as saying. The members of the Vice President's campaign team said campaign teams should tell delegates what their candidates could do instead of reducing the contest to bouts on eloquence and the ability to debate. They pointed out that, Dr. Limann throughout his tenure as president never made one single sentence in Twi while Imoro Egala, who was the leader of the People's National Party (PNP) could not speak any Akan language, but was, in fact, the leader of the party and long before then, a minister of state during Dr. Kwame Nkrumah's era. They said, under the Directive Principles of State Policy, language is not a requirement or a criteria for elections and appointing people to political offices. The unhappy Aliu campaign team said, Prince Armah cannot discriminate against the Vice-President, and whip up negative sentiments against him merely on grounds of Aliu's inability to speak an indigenous language. The campaign team members added that, the NPP constitution frowns on tribalism and other tribal-related issues, and then described as unfortunate utterances by elements, such as Prince Armah, who should be stopped before they plunge the country into chaos. According to Aliu’s campaign team, the Vice-President has indeed assisted President John Agyekum Kufuor in running the affairs of state from the presidency and has acquitted himself creditably in that regard. To them every Ghanaian can attest to that fact of the Vice-President's loyalty and efficiency, and the fact that he has never disappointed the president nor Ghanaians as well as the party. "He has served as a competent vice president: he can best be described as an able and affable gentleman," one member pointed out. Source: The Independent