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THE OPPOSITION New Patriotic Party (NPP) is accusing government of buying some journalists to keep their focus on the internal wrangling within the party instead of keeping the regime on its toes.

According to the NPP, some journalists have been paid huge sums of money to do the bidding of government and cover up what it calls the “bad governance the people have been subjected to under the NDC government.”

Speaking at a press conference at the party’s head office on Friday, acting chairman, Freddie Blay also denounced the State-sponsored attacks on the NPP, in the wake of the dawn raid at the party’s headquarters on Monday, November 23.

According to the NPP, instead of the media focusing its attention on the government, which has brought in its wake worsening economic hardships, rising levels of unemployment, high cost of living, a rapidly depreciating currency, ‘dumsor’, low business and consumer confidence in the economy, and growing levels of despondency amongst the populace, the media, surprisingly, has its focus rather on the opposition.

“These times, however, some journalists, by no means all, are paid to abandon their ethics and adopt a culture of silence over the way our country is being incompetently managed, keeping their attention rather on making the opposition unduly unpopular.

“The country is faced with serious challenges. Hiring hoodlums, sending armed men, using state security apparatus to harass, intimidate, and provoke reprisal attacks is cheap, archaic and unimaginative!” Mr Blay stated.

He said the NPP grossly deplores and condemns the “crude tactics by powerful people of the State to create a constant state of diversion from the mountain of problems facing the country. We call on the good people of Ghana to join us to resist these growing threats to our democracy by the forces of darkness.

“To the State security agencies, including the Military high command, the Ghana Police Service and the Office of National Security, the NPP Chairman urged these institutions to conduct full-scale investigations into how and why and under whose authorization their own forces were involved in an attack on the offices of the opposition.

“The investigations must be conducted professionally, transparently, and without political interference or bias. Anyone who participated in the planning and execution of this attack must be held accountable. We must end this here, today,” he added.

Government has, however, rubbished the allegations by the NPP and described them as false. In a statement signed by the Communications Minister, Dr Edward Omane Boamah, government stated that it is “constrained to correct a wicked and malicious falsehood peddled by the New Patriotic Party to the effect that Government acting through the Military and Police invaded the party's headquarters in Accra in the early hours of Monday, 23rd November, 2015.

“For the avoidance of doubt, Government wishes to place on record that this claim is a deliberate fabrication by the New Patriotic Party calculated at shifting blame for the horrendous leadership it has had leading to its rapid descent into chaos, violence, lawlessness, brutal killings and total confusion over the last year or so.

“We are aware that the NPP routinely dabbles in anti-government propaganda of the most undesirable kind, but this latest falsehood against government marks a new low in the party's resort to outright untruths to pursue its objectives. As it is to be expected, they have once again failed to provide a scintilla of evidence to back these noisy claims.”

Dr Boamah said over the last few years, the Government of President John Dramani Mahama has demonstrated its commitment to the maintenance of law and order and respect for the rule of law.

“This is manifest in the amount of investment that has gone into the biggest retooling ever carried out by any government of the country's security Agencies.

“This retooling has positioned them to respond adequately to contemporary security challenges. But for this state of readiness on the part of our security agencies, more bloodshed would have been recorded at the NPP headquarters which has become an outpost of lawlessness and violence instead of the administrative nerve-centre of a political party.