Akufo-Addo To Outfox Mills - Observer

Key players in the Nana Akufo-Addo campaign team have told the Ghanaian Observer newspapae that Evans Atta Mills`s door-to-door `I Care For You` campaign strategy will be scientifically modified by the NPP together with the National Campaign Office of the New Patriotic Party in a bid to give the NDC a dose of its own political medicine in the titanic 2008 elections. For a party largely seen as elitist and standoffish, the new campaign strategy of Nana Akufo-Addo will be to reach out to the electorate at the grass roots – politically affecting all groups on that social ladder with a personal touch – besides the remote platform and media interactions – to make the desirable impact in the 2008 elections as the flagbearer of the NPP. He has therefore, with the support of his boys, aspirants and national campaign office sent arranged political sessions with identifiable groups, including fishermen and fishmonger associations across the coastline, farmers in the country side, traders` groups on the various markets, the membership as well leadership of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and Muslim and Christian religious bodies. Also on his list are groups like traditionalists and traditional leaders, artists and artistes, women`s groups and identifiable youth groups nation wide. Some of the sessions will be held on regional basis, while others will be held at the level of constituencies for good effect. `Nana`s nature as a home boy and his ability to come down to the level of the grass roots is a huge asset in the NPP`s Presidential election campaign,` one activist at the Quartey Villa cell of the NPP, one of the cells in La which Akufo-Addo, Dr. Ives Wereko Brobbey and Nyaho Tamakloe frequently visited in the formative years of the NPP to fight the then ruling National Democratic Congress. `Nana has the ability to fit into every situation, because he has constantly been in touch with the boys in communities in which he lived like Kokomlemle, Nima and Adabraka, for instance, and shared life with them; which makes it normal and natural for him to run a campaign that is people targeted,` he added. Nana , GO was told, will also meet groups like the Civil Servants Association, Judicial Services Association of Ghana, Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) and the rival National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT). His strategists say the `strikingly boundless level of energy` Nana displayed during the last NPP Congress, in spite of his late start as a contender in the game and the fact that he sailed through the process, is an indication of how committed he is to grass roots campaign to erode the notion that the NPP is an elitist party, with no touch at the grass roots. They also add that Nana`s strategy to get into the trenches will erase the notion for example that the NPP is not the party of choice in areas like indigenous Accra and the three Northern regions. `Defeating Mills in the 2008 elections will therefore be total and decisive,` Kabilla, one of his foot soldiers in the Kpeshie district told GO in Accra over the phone at the weekend. Nana has already met the cream of the nation`s musicians and identifiable women trader`s groups on Accra`s Markets in the company of aides. Pound for pound, his boys assert, Mills will be no match for Nana in that kind of arrangement “because Nana has been cut to that kind of gamesmanship in politics – from his sojourn in France and law practice in the USA – to his role as a key activist in the struggle against the Kutu Acheampong and Jerry Rawlings dictatorships.` They also believe that when it comes to issues, Nana has the capacity to shine and meet Mills `boot for boot.`