NDC Compiles 2008 'Hit List'

How seriously the National Democratic Congress(NDC) is taking the 2008 elections is expressed in an exercise currently taking place away from the prying eyes of the media and government apparatus.

The exercise, which is quite in line with the thinking of majority of NDC leaders, most of whom believe the law of “...wilfully causing financial loss to the state” should continue to remain on the statute books, involves the crafting of a 'hit list' of all errant appointees of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) - from the dawn of 2001, when the NPP inherited power - to the eve of the 2008 elections.

A research department manned by a select group of die-hards, including a friend to this reporter, is currently at work, reviewing and revising material comprising contract and bidding documents, agreements with funding agencies, intra-state agency correspondences and press cuttings, especially from the pages of the more credible government or independent papers on matters having to do with allegations on corruption.

The exercise is not handled by average party administrative personnel who hardly understand legal and security issues, but young middle-class, educated technocrats and members, who have the capacity to analyse figures, documents and other such material within the context of the rudiments of law.

Names heavy on the list range from Ministers to DCEs and 'cronies' of appointees. Companies and institutions have also been cited in terms of their roles in those acts seen by the research team to have engaged in deals that could well in their estimation pass for crimes against the state in terms of the laws that have seen several honourable NDC personalities thrown into jail and some others like Mrs. Konadu Agyemang Rawlings dragged to the court.

At least NDC Founder and ex-President Jerry John Rawlings, has warned on several platforms on the need for the expansion of the Nsawam Prisons because of the huge number of NPP appointees to be dragged in there for alleged crimes against the state.

Sources close to Kuku Hill and the Ridge offices of the NDC Founder and other sources among the moderates in the NDC have told GO that every whiff of allegation in papers involving DCEs, Ministers, officials of the Office of the President, as well as contracts given out in the Armed Forces, Police and other state agencies are being quietly investigated by the team, which allegedly boasts of having all documents of all contracts given out by the ruling administration.

A few names leaked to GO include one Regional Minister and a DCE. A couple of other institutions mentioned include Databank in the famous Obotan Project, involving SSNIT, currently on the Serious Fraud Office Hit List, as well as the CNCTI loan and Sahara among others.

And the more the allegations appear in some particular newspapers, the more credible the research team takes the story, and begins investigations into it. Papers taken especially serious include The Crusading Guide, Gye Nyame Concord, The Enquirer, The Daily Dispatch, GO and The Chronicle.

A front page newspaper cutting from The Chronicle on the Obotan Project, for instance, was shown to GO by one of our sources, as was a piece on the controversial Ports and Harbours rehabilitation project, appearing in other papers, including the Gye Nyame Concord.

One top telecommunications company has also been cited, accused of milking the State “as NPP top guns look the other way.”

The several names mentioned to GO have all been withheld for security and strategic reasons.

But fears that the project may not see the light of day has been expressed by one contact on the project, who anticipates that the NPP may be forced to go the full hog against all of the former President's men, including Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings and former Finance Minister Kwame Peprah. This they believe would be to pre-empt that threat aired by Rawlings and the hawks in the NDC regarding the expansion of the Nsawam Prisons, with the view to create more space for Kufuor's erring men to be thrown into the 'cooler'.

“Either way - from the ends of both NPP or NDC - it is like killing a cat; you either muster courage to kill it in a one-strike fashion, or you end up having your belly split open by the desperate animal,” one source philosophised to GO on the wilfull causing of financial loss to the state law.