Fear Grips Konadu's Team

Members OF the Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings campaign team and especially the Friends of Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings (FONKAR) are living in fear, following alleged death threats on their lives by unknown persons. Founder and President of FONKAR, Ransford Vanni-Amoah told DAILY GUIDE how he and other members of the group had been inundated with calls in the last couple of weeks by unidentified persons who threatened to kill them if they did not �shut up�. He said he had reported the matter to the Anomabu Police in the Central Region, where a certain Frank Amuzu confirmed to DAILY GUIDE about the report made to the police station. Narrating his ordeal, Ransford, who has committed himself to helping the former First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, to win the upcoming flagbearership contest of the party said, �The unknown callers have been threatening to take my life if I do not stop those nonsense I and my FONKAR group are doing.� According to him, the phone numbers appeared on their cell phones as �unknown� and the unknown persons had been calling him since 7th June 2011. �The number appears as unknown. The first call was received on Tuesday 7th June, 2011 at 5:29am and the most recent was on Thursday 16th June, 2011 at 8:15pm�. He alleged that the unidentified callers asked why a young man like him should become a thorn in the flesh of the President of the Republic, John Evans Atta Mills, who is seeking re-election in 2012. According to Ransford, the callers also appeared worried about the short speech he gave at the recent celebration of June 4 in Kumasi in which he challenged the President�s loyalty to the NDC and the revolution which gave birth to it. �One of the callers also told me that they know Joseph Yamin, the Ashanti Regional Secretary, is the one who is encouraging me to do all what I am doing and they are promising Yamin and I that we will definitely be out of the scene.� The unidentified caller, he claimed, threatened further that �they are watching us closely and they know our movements and as for me I�m just a little thing in their eyes. They know me to be one of Yamin�s boys in Ashanti Region and he (Yamin) was the one who encouraged me to speak on the June 4 day. They have all the powers to crush me�. According to Ransford, the person who called him spoke Fante and said that �he knows my movements in the Central Region and while people fear to talk on behalf of Nana Konadu�s campaign team, I have taken a bold decision to be on radio in the region to speak for Nana Konadu.� This particular caller, he said, warned him that �if I don�t stop, I will die before the congress and that�s where I will see my foolishness.� He (the caller) was said to have added that �why should a Fante like me be disturbing a Fante President. I should better advice myself because they have all the government machinery to deal with me and my FONKAR cronies.� But on all occasions, �the only answer I�ve been giving them is that I�m not fazed by their impotent threats� since according him, he and his colleagues like Ernest Owusu-Bempah and Dela Coffie, Operations Director and Communications Director respectively, and all of its members were courageous, thereby telling their pursuers to �tell their pay masters that we are prepared to match them boot for boot.� �FONKAR has over 50,000 registered members so if a drop of blood of any FONKAR member touches the ground, there would be serious mayhem in the country. So they should rather advise their masters. We need peace in our party so the so-called �Asomdwee hene� should better talk to his guys,� he said. Owusu-Bempah, Dela Coffie and Saint Osei, all leading members of FONKAR, have had cause to make similar complaints about alleged intimidation and threats on their lives on several occasions. Apart from threats of deaths, they said in some instances their vehicles and rooms were broken into, and items including laptop computers which they said contain valuable information, were made away with. In spite of this, FONKAR members said they remained resolute in their quest to get Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings elected on congress day, July 9, to lead the NDC to victory in the 2012 general elections.