The National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Tuesday afternoon gave Ghanaians a foretaste of what will happen at the up-coming December 2000 congress.
There was a fight! The venue: no less a place than the national headquarters of the party off the Ring Road on the La-Circle Road in Accra. The chief spectator incidentally was Nii Okaidja Adamafio, former Minister for the Interior who ironically chose not to act out his role as a former security chief.
It all happened when delegates from the regions convened in Accra to attend to some party business, the Chronicle was not too much interested in. then there were insinuations; and then again innuendos and, later, personal verbal attacks that ranged from vituperative to unprintable profanity- all in the Ga language, though combatants themselves were not Gas.
In the centre of the storm were the National Women’s Organiser, Mrs Frances Asiam and two young boys alleged by Frances to be boys from Obed’s stable. She swore she knew them by face and name a few years ago, she saved one of them from the clutches of the law.
Obed’s “boys”, she further alleged, appeared to have been let loose on her. She recounted to The Chronicle how a few weeks ago, Lawyer Kwaku Baah, the man who carried kenkey and fish under his armpit into Justice Nii Amaah Ollennu’s Third Republican Parliament and later fell out of favour with the United Party (UP) tradition, also let loose his boys on her, with a lady in a red car also, barely a few weeks ago, confronting her in a bellicose manner, accusing her of fighting Obed.
Her crime? She was not only being supportive of Prof Evans Atta Mills, she had been hopping from one radio station to the other, preaching the Mills faith and creed.
The boys on the other hand charged that Frances’ actions in “fighting” Kwesi Botchwey stemmed from the inability of the latter to provide her a ?6m cash package to oil her personal pocket. She was therefore, out to spite Kwesi Botchwey and, by extension, Obed, and hence the open campaign against the former Minister for Finance.
The boys were therefore coming down to warn her, but the warning turned into thunderous verbal exchanges and ultimately a fight.
Fortunately or unfortunately, brunt of the physical attack fell on another young man around who had gone to the aid of the burly women’s organiser, Asiam. The hapless young man was hurled up like a leaf in summer and thrown onto the hard ground in a combat that looked more like a wrestling match between Dagbon fire eaters up North than a fisticuff between kenkey eating Ga boys at Bukom.
Strangely enough, most of the people around looked on giving the paper the impression that Botcwhey is still stronger at the headquarters. Left to quite a number of office staff and delegates there, the National Women’s Organiser should have been left alone to face the wrath of the “veranda boys”.
“I will sue Obed; I will sue his boys for calling me a whore and a wee smoker. Obed cannot gag me. He can do it to everybody; not me. He wants everybody to fall in line. I will not kow-tow to anybody. I love the party, and will continue to work only for the party, not individual interests,” she thundered, knocking everyone in her way with her huge torso and broadsides.
“I will fight Obed and pick up my bag and walk out of here if need be… I don’t care a hoot…”
