The Young Patriots of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) are challenging the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) to produce a scintilla of evidence of corruption or impropriety of any kind against the party’s flagbearer, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, if they have any. The Young Patriots say having combed through the Foreign Ministry headed by Nana Addo with binoculars and vetted thoroughly the man’s conduct of public business in search of a smoking gun and finding none, the ruling party was resorting to scare tactics, rumour mongering and character assassination designed to tarnish the image of the NPP flag-bearer. Speaking on MultiTV’s political discussion programme, Minority Caucus, coordinators of the Young Patriots, Messrs John Kumah and Richard Nyama said it was curious that in all of the NDC’s diatribe against the NPP Presidential candidate, never have spokespersons of the party pointed to one incident of corruption or any illegality he was involved in. John Kumah said faced with a formidable opponent against whom the NDC cannot level allegations of corruption or property grabbing, as it is wont to do, the ruling party was desperately seeking to dupe the people of Ghana into retaining the NDC in power despite the government’s disappointingly lacklustre performance, trumping up warped arguments of immorality against the NPP flag-bearer. The NDC, he said, appeared to be pushing a campaign message that says that, ‘look we know Prof. Mills is not performing, we know Nana Akufo-Addo is not corrupt; he has never stolen any money of the state, but we cannot trust him’. For him, many in the NDC including President Mills (in spite his deceptive God-fearing posture, he said) cannot pass the morality test to which they are unfairly and mischievously holding Nana Addo. He said consistently maligning the NPP’s presidential candidate through malicious rumours and vicious lies - after having failed to find the slightest wrong on his part – was disingenuous, dishonest and condemnable. In what appears a dress rehearsal for the 2012 elections campaign, the two, seeming agitated and ready for battle, reiterated their resolve to not continue to run a decent issues-based campaign while opponents of the NPP run amok ridiculing the party’s presidential candidate and denting his image criminally without regard for fairness and decency. Mr Nyama said Nana Addo in the last elections prevailed on the Young Patriots not to allow themselves to be provoked by the NDC to engage in negative campaigns as that was not the solution to the myriad of problems confronting the citizenry. He expressed the hope this time round the flag-bearer will not restrain them again. “From the time we had Nana elected as the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party in [2007], the whole elections turned to his person; there was nothing about issues. Insults, insults, they denigrated the man’s record from his private life to his public life. [In his] 35 good years of public service to Ghana, if nothing at all when I was doing Political Science (at the University), I read the contributions he made to halting UNIGOV, I read and I experienced his contributions to the coming into being of the 1992 Constitution. Now you have students…who will drag the good name of Nana into the gutters in the name of politics and be [rewarded with] cabinet positions,” he stated. “In actual fact,” he said, “today, your recognition in the NDC government is dependent on how much you insult Nana.” For him it was illogical that the puritan President Mills was presiding over a government in which the Information Ministry had been reduced to a 'ministry of misinformation' where government and party spokespersons met to plan how to insult, malign and unjustifiably sully the reputation of opponents of the government. John Kumah, in his contribution, said the NDC, realising the government has no record to campaign on and can no longer make the risible argument about corruption – because it has lost the moral right to make that argument owing to the unacceptably high levels of corruption and plain stealing in the administration – was gearing up for a campaign of personalities in the 2012 elections. “Look at the promises that Prof Mills made to this country. The first one ‘when I come I will jail all Ya-Na killers’…our brothers from the North, they (NDC) separated families - brothers and sisters could not talk - just to win votes. They promised that when Prof. Mills became president, he would jail all the killers. What happened when the court threw out the case… and he met just one group, he said that he was not the judge to give verdict for the people. …so when he was promising them he didn’t know he was not a judge”? he asked. Mr Kumah catalogued a litany of promises he said the president made and broke with casual abandon and yet the ruling party was not interested in answering to the people why it has failed to fulfill its promises to them. According to him, the NDC’s persistently unwarranted attacks on Nana Addo was to divert attention from its unprecedented poor performance and unparalleled breaking of electoral promises. He said while the government was fighting desperately to cover up its shady deals, “we are interested in creating politicians who will become role models for the younger generation; we want our political discourse to be civil; we want it to be about issues and about our future development; we don’t want to be fighting, we want to be role models. We want decent language in our politics not personality attacks.” Story by Malik Abass Daabu/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana