The growing level of awareness on the need to sanitise our political activities and refrain from reducing the game of politics to vile propaganda, thuggery, intimidation and insults appear not to be washing on the thick skin of some of the boys on the lunatic fringe in our communities. Activists of the Democratic Freedom Party recently had to restrain themselves from appropriately responding to the violent posturing of thugs, who had blocked the way of the train of vehicles sending activists and hosts from the assembly hall of the Boateng Vocational Institute in Nsawam, where the DFP had held a programme to inaugurate constituency executives. The huge crowd had faithfully gathered at the hall, in spite of the torrential rains, and had positively interacted with the leadership of the DFP, culminating in the inauguration of constituency executives to run the affairs of the DFP in Nsawam and the outlying communities. A police team of four was present to secure the place and protect the activists and the leadership of the DFP against any unforeseen acts of intimidation. The programme ended in just two hours, after speaker after speaker had reminded the party in the constituency of its philosophy of a clean and decent campaign and urged its boys and girls to take the DFP's message of a new Ghana and new leadership to the outlying communities in the constituency. Just as the meeting ended and the train of vehicles were coming out, a group of thugs attempted preventing the cars from moving out of the lanes leading into the compound of the vocational school by physically standing in the way. The vehicle conveying the police had earlier left in the convoy of party chief Obed Asamoah, leaving the train to follow Obed and the other party chiefs to the Roman Catholic resort, slightly away from town. The thugs, ostensibly aware that the police, who were likely to react swiftly to their posturing were out of the way, then came out of a comer and stood in front of one of the vehicles upfront, demanding why as "champions in the area," they had not been consulted for "clearance" and their input before the programme was planned and executed. The thugs, numbering five, carried no identification, but one eyewitness picked out one of them as a driver belonging to a union in Nsawam. He appeared to be the ringleader. The tall and lanky thug was in black, and high on alcohol. He seemed to be coming from a funeral. The rest, however, were in ordinary attire. The angry activists of the DFP quickly got out from their vehicles to confront the rogues. Public opinion, however, weighed heavily against the thugs and they had to knuckle under and reduce their war game to a sick joke, saying to the angry activists that "we are all brothers." When police in plain-clothes returned upon a tip-off later to mop up their operations, they had fled with the speed of the wind. Dr. Obed Asamoah, earlier in his speech, reminded government on the need to put farmers at the forefront of its economic programmes, if the nation is not only to be food secure, but also keen on joining the emerging economies as a strong agro-based economy. Farmers, he reiterated, ought to be supported and their operations subsidised, so that they would be able to reduce production costs, compete fairly on the international market and earn more foreign exchange for the nation through fresh food exports and processed, value added agricultural products. Source: The Ghanaian Observer