Hotel Kufuor: Collapse Of NDC's Ace

- Gizelle Yazji, Femme Fatale

THE CRUTCH on which the leading opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is leaning to launch its crusade packaged against corruption and perception of widespread corruption within the Presidency has collapsed, as it emerged yesterday that a leading member of the 'Coffee Shop mafia,' Mr. Egbert Faibille, Jnr., had discovered that she is a lying, deceitful source who could endanger any inexperienced reporter, as Faibille himself had experienced in his face-off with Raymond Archer in the famous Eddie Annan-Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority affair.

The credibility of American-Iraqi, Ms. Giselle Yajzi, whose strong, vociferous remonstrations on radio set the nation agog with titillating persuasive tales of presidential indiscretions and improprieties, raised the hyped tales when she offered to testify on a probe into the matter but withdrew when the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) waded into the matter and invited her to testify.

Shifting goal posts, the NDC echoed Miss Yajzi's concerns that CHRAJ was not independent enough or properly constituted.

It emerged that Giselle had made repeated fraudulent representations about her identity to Faibille, intimating that she was a maid to an adviser to the President, and followed up with a photograph of herself when pressed for pictures of the maid and the twins she said had come from the relationship with the President.

Faibille later discovered in discussions with the leader of the Coffee Shop brigade, Mr. Kweku Baako, and consultations with sources who know Giselle personally, that the picture and voice were indeed those of Giselle Yajzi.

Piecing together the pieces of evidence that she has been passing on to selected media houses and radio stations and her failure to produce the smoking gun, have destroyed her credibility and left the NDC, which is leaning on her 'evidence' to nail the President, to totter and eventually collapse in a heap of unsubstantiated blabber packaged as a legitimate crusade against corrupt acquisition by the Presidency.

On a radio programme yesterday on Peace FM's award-winning 'Kokroko' programme, the NDC's feisty spokesperson, former MP Ms. Ama Benyiwa Doe, and defender political activist and newspaper editor, Mr. Kweku Baako, clashed over the issue of the credibility of Yajzi with the latter systematically dissecting Yajzi and revealing publicly that he had custody of the recordings made by Faibille of Yajzi's 'fraudulent' representations and wondered why the NDC should lean on the evidence or non-evidence of someone who had no credibility and was a fraud.

In an equally brilliant counter-punch, Ms. Doe struck with a telling riposte: 'If she is a fraud and has no credibility, why did you bring a fraud to come and advise the President?”

It was a loaded question that Mr. Baako had no answer to other than to make allusions to Julie Cotton, the African American who was introduced by the Ministry of Agriculture's Ibrahim Adam and the Ministry of Finance to assist in the cultivation and development of over 20,000 hectares of rice in Ghana to cut or eliminate the huge $120 million dependency of rice imports.

Ms. Benyiwa Doe pressed on – dismissing Baako who was the journalist of the year in 2003 as a 'nobody' with no body's mandate but a defender of the NPP Government, who eternally defends the Presidency and never sees anything good in the NDC.

“We represent 44 percent of the people of Ghana…as far as Ghana is concerned and we have more at stake than you - a nobody… who represents nobody.”

For good measure, Ms. Doe roped in the Acting Commissioner of CHRAJ, Ms. Anna Bossman, and charged that she was beating her chest about being capable of conducting a probe into the 'Hotel Waa Waa' or 'Hotel Kufuor affair' when the constitution was clear about the correct composition of CHRAJ, which is presently without two of its three-member commissioners. CHRAJ is not supposed to be a sole commission.

According to the argument of Ms. Doe, which is a rehash of the position of the NDC's Alban Bagbin, Parliament would be setting up a committee to probe the affair, and what is clearly a potentially mischievous twist of the knife, intimating that the purpose was to clear and sanctify 'our President.'

With a clear sense of history and hindsight, Ms. Doe prophesied, “If we don't speak about it to clear our President today, we will ask about it tomorrow.”

The NDC minority have complained about the failure of the Speaker, the Right Honourable Ebenezer Sekyi-Hughes, to allow the issue to be discussed on the floor of Parliament, a revisit to the days barely five to six years ago, when the minority leader, then in the shoes of the majority NDC party, blocked a similar effort by the New Patriotic Party (NPP), then in the minority, to investigate allegations of bribery from Muhammed Gwarzo, the national security chief of then Nigerian leader Sanni Abacha, involving President Rawlings.

When the Minority Leader, Hon. S.K. Bagbin, was reached to comment on the assertion that he and his colleagues then in majority halted the minority to raise the allegations of bribery against the former President Jerry John Rawlings, he said it was unfortunate that reference is now being made.

Expressing shock and dismay, he told this paper that the issues raised by the minority were not personal, adding that they were only trying to ensure that people elected into various positions served in the interest of the people.

“Is that what the people want? If that is how Ghanaians want, I have no problem with that because this is not a personal matter. If Ghanaians do not want allegations against the president and future presidents including any elected persons because allegations made against the former president were not invited, so be it,” Bagbin declared.

Asked why the then minority was blocked when they wanted to make a statement on the floor of parliament, he said they were not aware that a statement was filed at the office of the speaker of Parliament, Justice D.F. Annan, until, Hon. Hackman Owusu Agyemang, raised it during the question and answer time which was overruled by the Speaker.

“The majority did not block anything. It was the Speaker. We heard of it when Hon. Hackman Owusu-Agyemang raised it during a question time and that was the first time we heard it.”

When the Chronicle pushed further that after the Speaker failed to allow them to make the statement, the minority then in parliament remained silent without resorting to press conferences as was done by them, Hon. Bagbin dismissed it saying at that time, the then minority went outside the country to sell the information.

He said it was unfortunate that people are trying to curtail their move to unravel the mystery surrounding the purchase of “Hotel Kufuor” to clear the name of the president.

Mr. Faibille, Jnr. when contacted corroborated what Kweku Baako Jnr said on Peace FM, that the woman portrayed herself to be what she was not.