The Director of Communications at the Presidency, Koku Anyidoho, has cleared some confusion that arose during President Mills’ delivery of the State of the Nation Address, Thursday, where he mentioned he has no intent to stimulate conflict in the Ashanti Region.
“Atta Mills has no intention of bringing violence to Ashanti nor is he aware of anyone using his name to disturb the peace in Ashanti,” the President said when touching on preparations for the election 2012 during his hour and a half long delivery.
But the General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party, Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie, is the least enthused by the President’s State of the Nation Address, saying Prof. Mills only succeeded in “showing his true colours – tribalistic”.
President Mills might have incurred the wrath of the NPP for comments about the Ashanti Region in his address delivered to Parliament Thursday, though it was supposed to be a personal commitment to peace and probably no malice towards the Ashanti Region, the stronghold of the opposition NPP, in the 2012 elections.
The party’s General Secretary Owusu Afriyie, also known as Sir John, told Joy FM, a local radio station that, the comments confirmed the Wikileaks’ report about President Mills, concerning a certain “Ashanti project”.
He said it was needless for the President to mention the Ashanti Region alone, according to him, it would have been “acceptable” if he had generalized his statement on security.
Mr Afriyie stressed that the President’s statement is “tribalistic and pregnant with a lot of meaning…and…confirms our worse fear about the President’s intent as it appeared in the Wikileaks report .”
Explaining what prompted the pronouncement form the President, Koku Anyidoho said it was in direct response to a story published in Thursday’s edition of the Daily Guide, titled “Mills secret plan out”, where it revealed that it had uncovered a ploy by the Nation Democratic Congress to destabilise the strongholds of the New Patriotic Party; especially the Ashanti Region.
Koku Anyidoho said though the President is not in the habit of responding to newspaper publications he thought this particular story had the propensity to generate a feud and as such used the platform to debunk the story and deny knowledge of any such ploy.
A portion of the publication read that “It appears President John Evans Atta Mills is trying by hook or by crook to retain power in the 2012 general elections. He has commissioned a team of experts and tasked it to help devise ways and means to enable him to win the upcoming election slated for December. Among the strategies the President is adopting is to create confusion in strongholds of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), especially in the Ashanti Region, before and during the general elections.”
Koku Anyidoho said the story is false an only born of mischief against the government.
“It’s only right and proper for a President who is responsible, to confront such an issue. So the President was responding specifically to this Daily Guide story, and a mischievous one at that …the President was rather reassuring the people of the Ashanti Region that, I have nothing against you, I don’t intent to create any mayhem there. You will be allowed to exercise your voting rights the way you want to do it.”
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