The Ashanti Regional Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is a most remarkable character Jomo: The year is 1985 and JJ is in power. We are on a tour of this flourishing orchard integrated innovatively into an expansive farm way up at Lambussie in the Sissala area of the Upper West Region. We are inspecting fruit-laden mango and guava trees plots of, various food crops fish and crocodile ponds, see? A bull on the farm which had been grazing on shrubs while glaring menacingly in our direction from a distance, suddenly comes charging at us, its murderous horns pointing earthward but tipped upward at an angle to do its worst on contact with anything. We scatter like cretins, Jomo, legging it in all directions for the wide open spaces-journalists, farmers, agricultural officers and a delegation of government "secretaries", as ministers of state were designated by Rawlings's administration at the time. Even before the rest of us took off in such undignified flight, one of the secretaries of state had quickly and with amazing agility, leapt high, grabbed a tree branch and swung himself up, drawing up his knees simultaneously, to prevent the rampaging bovine creature from getting anywhere near him. When calm returned I stared with disbelief at Mr Daniel Ohene Agyekum, the secretary who had pulled off the impromptu acrobatic act. A journalist from Accra told me the man had been an athlete and a great hockey player in younger days. That was the first and last time I saw the man. He was later appointed Ghana's High Commissioner to Canada. My memory of the man is at stark variance with news reports this week, that Mr Agyekum had brandished poultry eggs and bottle of schnapps about, while calling on a feared god called Antoa, to come down and kill his political enemies one time. His opponents had impugned the integrity of his party with false accusations in a bid to cast the party in a bad light and deny it precious votes in December. Tell someone from Southern Ghana that a galaxy of stray asteroids is heading into the orbital path of the earth at an angle close to his country, and he will probably laugh and go about his business. Tell him that the feared Antoa is coming to get him, and he will run through a concrete wall with ease, It is not the business of scientists to condemn or condone superstition. They study it as a human phenomenon. If an intellectual and former diplomat and a Christian one at that should invoke spiritual forces to wreak vengeance on his political enemies, there must be something serious amiss! If some of the politicians vying for power are turning to the forces of darkness for help to obtain redress for grievances, it can only mean that they are feeling disadvantaged when it comes to access to effective tools of communication for redress and self-defense when under accusation for alleged acts likely to affect their electoral fortunes. To attack and kill an enemy will result in prosecution for murder: On the other hand, should someone kick the bucket right after an assassin has purportedly cast a spell of sorts on him or her, there is nothing in criminal law anyone could use to prosecute the alleged killer. It also means that the bitterness and hostility between those jostling for electoral victory in December run deeper than we have so far reckoned. It is a most discomforting thought. Early in the week, I worked the radio dial furiously back and forth like a bloke in a sound decoding laboratory of the FBI, trying to assimilate, synchronise and make some sense of the brisk trade in accusations between the NDC and the NPP. A dangerous cocktail of provocative statements, insults and insinuations exploding on radio broadcast is making rank nonsense of the repeated appeals for a peaceful election. On one radio station, a phone-in caller was riling away with great passion at the president of the republic in connection with a statement the president allegedly had made about the NDC's presidential candidate. It got a bit nasty at one stage and the programme host terminated the call. I moved on to another station and there was the Minister of Information, Mr Stephen Asamoah Boateng, engaged in a hot argument with another fellow who had taken exception to the president's alleged remarks about Professor Mills and was letting out steam. I worked the dial again and another station was playing back a recording of the president's statement for public consumption. It transpired that the president had addressed supporters of his party at the suburb of Madina and in the process taunted his political foes with a couple of questions: Who, he asked, was the NDC's' presiden¬tial candidate: Professor Mills or Mr John Mahama? If Mills could not travel to the north of the country to campaign, how could he run the affairs of the nation? His political opponents having made a virtual campaign fetish of Professor Mills's state, of health, may naturally thought the implications of President Kufuor's statement were amply clear, but many of the president's party men argued strongly that nowhere in the president's remarks did he make any reference to Mills's state of health. Now, Jomo, if you notice a fat bird with a long flat beak waddling toward the banks of a muddy river and going quack, quack, what , other bird could it be but a "dabodabo"? You might also consider the case of the defence lawyer who argued that while there were Rothman’s 555 cigarettes on the market, the 55 cigarettes the complainant claimed his (lawyer's) client had stolen, did not exist and there was no way his client could have stolen what did not exist. To employ technical arguments and logical interpretations of fact to deny or give what is true the face of falsehood requires that you first kill your conscience, but why would anyone do that? Apparently because the stakes in the coming election are indeed very high. So high indeed, that normally nice and very respectable people will lie straight between the gums and molars without blinking, or at least pretend that they do not know truth. While the state of every presidential candidate's health is certainly an important issue, it is the compromise of conscience in very small matters like this which has profoundly worrying implications for the integrity of those we trust and the future of democracy in this country. Even reasonably objective people like the NPP's Dr Arthur Kennedy were caught in the trap: In spite of the glaring insinuations in the president's remarks concerning the NDC's presidential candidate, Dr Kennedy insisted that the interpretations of the president's remarks were merely "inferences." Boy! Electoral politics is confusing business and potentially dangerous into the bargain! Email: georgeabu@hotmail.com Website; www.sydneyabugri.com