THE WEEKEND STATEMAN

"Ghana begs to host 100bC congress...Another Rawlings spending spree. Reskon for VAT?', is the banner headline story in the Weekend Chronicle. The paper says very disturbing stories are filtering in about how

President Rawling is planning to add to government expenditure by hosting a conference in Accra along the lines of the NAM conference to aggrandise his stature knowing fully well that it will be an unbearable strain on the Ghanaian economy. The Weekend Chronicle says President Rawlings and his cronies are bidding and lobbying to be allowed to host the 8th Pan-African Congress, estimated at between 50 and 100 billion cedis, in Accra. GRI

The Weekend Chronicle has on its back page a story which gives indication of an impending NDC media attack against the NPP. Under the heading: "NDC media attaack against NPP soon", the story says the NDC government is set to launch a public relations onslaught to portray the NPP and the Minority Group in Parliament as villains and destroyers of the search for a national consensus on the economy. The paper said last Tuesday, barely three hours after the NPP press conference announcing its pullout from the National Economic Forum, a crisis meeting involving Mr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, Minister of Communications, his predecessor, Mr Kofi Totobi Quakyi and Dr Kofi Frimpong, Director-General of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), took place at Broadcasting House. According to the Weekend Chronicle, the purpose of the hurried meeting was to launch a media offensive against the NPP especially, attacking it for its withdrawal from the forum, using the tag of "pathological boycotters". GRI