Kufuor Insults Rawlings

Former President John Agyekum Kufuor, has said in an exclusive interview that Former President Rawlings is quick at mounting the rooftops to proclaim that people are corrupt as if “he is a living saint” adding that, “a lot of the time he sounds hypocritical”

“I don’t think serious people should use him (Rawlings) as a measure of righteousness in our society” he stated.

Mr. Kufuor who withdrew Former President Rawlings’ courtesies for what he considered offensive comments in the international press, was ironically blasting his predecessor in an international magazine - Africa Watch Magazine.

CONTROL FREAK

In the interview dubbed “enough is enough”, former President Kufuor sought to portray his predecessor as a control freak who will run people down if he doesn’t get his way whilst portraying himself as a gentle giant. Recalling the antecedents which led to the sour relationship which currently exist between the only surviving ex-presidents, Kufuor said, at the time he became President, the relationship between him and Rawlings wasn’t as bad as it is today, until he one day turned down rampant summons from Rawlings to meet him at places predetermined by Mr. Rawlings.

“When I assumed office, the first two months, things seemed to be all right, until every now and then he would send an emissary to tell me to meet him at some place. It happened, first, second and a third time. The first three I obliged but the fourth time, I sent the person back to tell him I would not meet him anywhere but at the Presidency” he stated.

Mr. Kufuor said, it was after he turned down Rawlings’ rampant summons for meetings that he started yelling insults at him.

“From then on he started raining abuses on me and it continued through the eight years that I was in power, going as far as to compare me with Ataa Ayi. What is he up to, I can’t understand”

Mr. Kufuor said, before he assumed power, it was his intension to respect Mr. Rawlings, the same way he wanted to be respected once he left power, but things went bad because of Rawlings’ tendency to yell insults at him.

ZERO TOLERANCE

When asked why people like former President Rawlings and his own party man, Kwame Piannim perceive his government as corrupt despite his “Zero Tolerance for corruption” mantra, he said Kwame Piannim left the NPP before he Kufuor became president.

“Kwame Piannim resigned from the NPP. Later on he tried to come back and people perhaps thought he still one of us. The truth is that he didn’t work in my government. He is a respected person and apparently he is quite close to President Mills. I know him but he wasn’t in my team” he said. But independent checks by The Enquirer newspaper suggests that Mr. Piannim indeed worked in the Kufuor government after he was appointed by the Kufuor government as chairman of the Public Utilities and Regulation Commission (PURC) On the issue of Zero Tolerance for Corruption, Mr. Kufuor said “When I talked of Zero Tolerance for Corruption, I meant it and that is why we enacted so many laws on it-Like the one on Public Procurement, where the biggest corruption in government lies”

“So we said beyond a certain low threshold of procurement, everything must go for open tender and the procurement authority should be independent. And that is what is operating now. We improved the conditions of service for the judiciary and empowered them to do their work without fear or favor, we also tried to modernize the court system and so many laws we put in place to curb corruption.” He further observed.

Ironically, even though the Kufuor Administration spearheaded the enactment of the public procurement laws, most of the major procurement under his government did not follow the procurement law.

In certain instances, then President Kufuor annulled a contract which went through a one year tender process and personally supervised the award of the contract to a Chinese company he had visited during one of his numerous trips to China.

The contract was in respect of the construction of Stadia for the CAN 2008 games.

Again, under his government, a multibillion dollar contract for the printing of textbooks was awarded to Macmillan without any tender.

Besides the above, the NPP government took advantage of a provision in the procurement Act which allows for sole sourcing in emergency cases to avoid public tendering in many government contracts.