Journalists Whacked At NDC Congress

Journalists from four different media houses who were on official duty, were physically assaulted by a group of fiercely-looking and heavily-built men believed to be supporters of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC). The journalists were covering the NDC�s Eastern regional congress which took place at the Akim Oda Methodist Church in the Eastern Region on Wednesday when they were attacked. The reporters were Daniel Bampoe of DAILY GUIDE, Kofi Siaw of Joy News, Kwame Martin, cameraman for TV Africa and Ohene Ntow of BIYAC FM � an Oda-based radio station. They were descended upon when they were taking shots of the event. A fight between the supporters of the aspiring regional woman organizer, Stella Adu Obeng and the supporters of Madam Evelyn Korang, the incumbent, at the congress. When the men of the incumbent women organizer spotted that, those of Stella, led by Joseph Appiah, MP for Afram Plains North, gathered some of the delegates and lobbied for votes for his aspirant. This infuriated some of the party supporters who visited their wrath on the journalists, who were then capturing the incident. One of the supporters who was said to be the former constituency organizer for Oda, grabbed the DAILY GUIDE reporter�s camera and threw it onto the ground, thereby attracting the attention of some police officers who intervened. The Oda Police Commander, ASP Prepah, who later arrived at the venue, was informed about the incident. He tried to cool down the tempers of the media men. Money Sharing DAILY GUIDE gathered that a lot of money was shared by the aspirants to woo the delegates for votes. That, it was gathered, even created a lot of confusion that nearly led to some clashes among some of the delegates. About 200 delegates from the 33 constituencies in the region cast their votes. At the time of filing this report yesterday, voting was still in progress.