Rejoinder: Okudzeto Behind My Hounding - Wereko Brobbey

I have read an accusation by Dr Charles Wereko Brobbey to the effect that I, Perry Okudzeto �and other managing staff at the party secretariat failed to offer adequate protection to the meeting, allowing baying and marauding youth to attempt to break down the doors and make a forcible entry into the meeting�. The sole purpose for the lack of protection, according to Dr Wereko Brobbey was to enable �baying and maurauding youth� to attack him on Friday when he appeared before the party's disciplinary committee at the headquarters. This accusation is completely false; without bases and totally irresponsible. Party supporters do not need to be invited to visit the headquarters. Dr Wereko Brobbey's date with the Disciplinary Committee had ample publicity, partly from his own contribution. If ever there was such a thing as a hallucinatory testimony then this is one. No where have I granted any such interview. Moreover, members of the Disciplinary Committee and also fellow staffers at the party headquarters were witnesses to the role I played in calming the nerves of the party supporters who had come there. I must stress that nobody attempted to harm his person and we made sure that there was no threat of that happening. He cannot, however, pretend to be clueless about how some party supporters take the time off to show up at party offices to express both their loyalty to the party and how passionately they may feel about a particular issue. And, that is exactly what happened last Friday. Some may choose to express their feelings and opinions in the written word, others may prefer to exercise that privilege in person and by word of mouth to the person they have an issue with. It is the responsibility of some of us, as party officials, to see to it that any such exercise of freedom of expression does not degenerate into violence. That is what I personally sought to do on Friday for Dr Wereko Brobbey even though there was no real threat of his person being attacked physically. No property was damaged. Egos might have been bruised but nothing more. I do not think Dr Wereko Brobbey can accuse me or any other official for that matter of not protecting him even from the tongue lashing he received from some of the supporters of the party, especially for a man who is no stranger to lashing out at others himself with his. Indeed, he spoke back in similar fashion to those party supporters who expressed their unhappiness with some of his writings and pronouncements about the NPP in recent times. Those who preach tolerance must also be tolerant when others also take them on. Some of the young people who came out there Friday said they were also part of party supporters who went out in their numbers to accompany him when he was being prosecuted (or persecuted as they saw it) over the Ghana@50 case. He is, of course, free to describe them today as �baying and marauding" youth. That may be fine. But, to sensationalise what happened to him and to falsely accuse me of orchestrating a reaction (which he has exaggerated) when the source of that reaction must be pretty obvious to him the conductor, is, ridiculous. It is telling of a man whose hunger for any sort of publicity these days is insatiable so long as it goes some distance to embarrassing the party he claims to support. I must say that this is not the first time that Dr Wereko Brobbey, since his suspension from the party by the NEC on Friday, 31st May, 2013, has thrown uncomplimentary remarks at me and I do not know why he has reduced the object of whatever frustrations he may be going through to me, a deputy communications director of the party. I remain clueless as to his motives for making me a target of his abundant wrath. ......signed...... Curtis Perry Okudzeto Deputy NPP Communications Director