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18.10.2008 NDC

President Bares Teeth At NDC

By Daily Graphic
President Bares Teeth At NDC
18.10.2008 LISTEN

The President has given the National Democratic Congress (NDC) a 14-day ultimatum to produce the evidence or unreservedly retract allegations made to the effect that he (the President) engaged in an oil business, as a result of which he owed a Kuwaiti firm $5 billion.

At a news conference at the Castle yesterday, the Press Secretary to the President, Mr Andrew Awuni, said, “The NDC has gone ahead to say that as a result of this so-called debt the President owes, he is being dragged to The Hague and that a certain queen is intervening on his behalf.”

He asked the opposition party to provide the proof, retract or face legal action.

According to the Presidential Spokesman, the leadership of the NDC and the Weekly Standard newspaper alleged that President Kufuor owed over $5 billion to some Kuwait oil suppliers and that his personal properties were being appropriated to defray that debt, an allegation he denied.

“The NDC did not leave this wicked allegation to their propagandists alone to peddle but they have, as a party, actually issued an official statement repeating this same allegation,” he added.

“President Kufuor does not have dealings with any Kuwaiti oil suppliers,” Mr Awuni reiterated, and added, “President Kufuor does not owe any oil company; he does not owe any Kuwaiti oil suppliers or any company anywhere, for that matter.”

The Press Secretary described the allegations as blatant lies deliberately hatched from the campaign strategy document of the NDC to smear President Kufuor and his government in the run-up to the elections and vowed that “it is enough and the government will not allow this to pass by”.

“In a similar fashion as the Kuwaiti oil lie, some mischievous propagandists have produced and are circulating a so-called list of government officials, their account numbers and amounts to their names,” he said.

Mr Awuni said the amounts listed in those documents were so huge that their sum total would exceed the sum of all deposits in all banks in the country put together.

“That is how disingenuous the originators of the document are and yet they are moving from chop bar to chop bar, lorry station to lorry station, spreading these lies. Sadly, these evil plotters have made the military barracks another destination for distributing this document, when they know very well that these are total fabrications and lies,” he said.

Mr Awuni questioned: “What is the motive? Clearly it is to provoke ill feelings from the military against the President and the good people of Ghana.”

“This is a President who stands tall among his peers and has endeared himself to the international community through his devotion to duty and upholding the integrity of his high office,” he said.

Mr Awuni said that was evidenced by the several high national and international awards that the President had received and continued to receive, even as he approached the twilight of his Presidency.

He said the high recognition accorded the President world-wide was not only unprecedented in the country's political history but was also “indeed, a fine proof of his hard-won reputation which cannot be easily tainted by these baseless lies”.

Mr Awuni said it was clear from the happenings that “these politicians have decided on deception as a means to political power”.

“They will repeat these lies, irrespective of how many times they are confronted with the truth,” he said, and asked the electorate to ignore those behind the act.

Story by Charles Benoni Okine

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