Is it true that ...

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 Source: GHANA PALAVER INTELLIGENCE

*A very strong anti-Aliu Mahama lobby has developed within the NPP dedicated to ensure that Vice President Aliu Mahama is dropped as running mate to President Kufuor in the December Presidential elections, that the real agenda of the group, made up mostly of Ashantis, is to make sure that Aliu Mahama will not be around as Vice President in 2008 should President Kufuor win the election in order to make a bid for the Presidency in 2008 and thus disturb the carefully worked out scenario designed to consolidate the Ashanti dominance of the NPP by putting up Minister of Trade, Industry and Presidential Special Initiatives Alan Kyeremanteng as the NPP Presidential candidate in 2008, and that to cover up this plan, the group has come up with the following logically cogent arguments with which to convince the NPP following that Aliu Mahama is not the man for December 2004:

(1) Aliu Mahama had all the chances to become the next President of Ghana but he has blown up the opportunities and chances due to his political naivet? and simple-mindedness;

(2) After his first year in office, Aliu Mahama, an Abudu, started tagging some Dagombas as non-Abudu sympathisers and therefore wanted to have little doing with them;

(3) Aliu Mahama began to surround himself with chieftaincy advisers instead of professional advisers, culminating in the Wednesday March 27, 2002 massacre at the Gbewaa Palace;

(4) Aliu Mahama is suspected to have been involved in the Massacre at the Gbewaa Palace, despite incessant official denials, together with the other leading NPP Abudu personalities who were in charge of the national security apparatus at the time and that the evidence to this effect is in the hands of the NDC who are waiting until the last minute to unleash it on the public to maximum devastating political effect;

(5) Aliu Mahama is aware that the resignation of the then Director of BNI and the transfer of the BNI officer at Yendi at the time of the Massacre to the Nadowli District Assembly is not unconnected to what they know about the Massacre at the Gbewaa Palace, which facts are also in the possession of the NDC;

(6) Aliu Mahama having been identified as the nucleus of the Abudu faction in the Dagbon chieftaincy dispute cannot be a team builder; he is going to repel votes, and he cannot attract any votes for the NPP in Dagbon;

(7) The NDC will make maximum use of the Dagbon issue which will not benefit the NPP but for which the NDC would have been dead in the Northern Region;

(8) The Nanumba people are aware that Aliu Mahama having destroyed Dagbon, wanted to do a similar thing at Bimbilla;

(9) On the religious front, Aliu Mahama is not a popular choice among the Muslim community and on the intellectual front, he cannot convince anybody in a debate;

(10) Aliu Mahama is only interested in contracts for his Lidra Company, for which he is taking away contracts from other companies and for which his Lidra Company is taking possession of assets and properties of companies that executed contracts for the state?

Source: GHANA PALAVER INTELLIGENCE