We've never leaked info on JJ -NPP

THE MAJORITY Leader and Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Hon. Papa Owusu Ankomah, has stated that the NPP government of which he is a cabinet minister has never leaked any information about ex-President Rawlings to the Ghanaian media to damage his reputation as it is being rumoured.

According to him, if the government has any information about ex-President Rawlings, it would come out officially to inform Ghanaians about it but not to hide behind journalists or some media houses to pass on such information to the public.

Speaking in an interview with the Chronicle last Monday, Hon. Papa Ankomah who is also an Mp for Sekondi said if anything at all, it is a section of the opposition that can be accused of leaking information about the government to the Ghanaian press.

He recalled that just recently the "Palaver," an Accra-based bi-weekly newspaper, which has sympathy towards the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), published a vital document purported to have emanated from the Ministry of Finance in which it was alleged that the government was going to buy a bullet proof car for President Kufuor.

He wondered if this information, granted it is true, was also leaked to the "Palaver" by the government if the latter is fond of leaking information to the Ghanaian press as being alleged in some quarters.

Paapa, as he is popular known in the Sekondi-Takoradi metropolis, further told Chronicle that the unsubstantiated allegation being levelled against the government appears to have been prompted by the recent decision by the government to make public some cars that were imported into the country by ex-President Jerry John Rawlings.

According to him, the importation of the said cars was not published as an exclusive story by any newspaper but through an official statement that was issued by the government and copied to the press which they also published.

The Parliamentary Affairs Minister further told this reporter that the government decided to issue an official statement in which the importation of the said cars were disclosed because it is incumbent upon them as government to inform the public why the ex-President was invited for questioning by the security agencies after the delivery of his positive defiance speech in Kumasi.

"We have promised Ghanaians to run a transparent government and that was why we issued that official statement to explain why ex-President Rawlings was invited for interrogation by the security apparatus of the state," he said.

In a related development, the leader and 2000 presidential candidate of the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP), Mr. Dan Lartey, has called for a truce between ex-President Rawlings and President Kufuor, and the NPP government.

He told Good News FM 96.3, a popular radio station in Takoradi, during a telephone interview last Tuesday morning that the continued exchange of words between the two parties would not augur well for the development of the country.

Turning the heat on President Kufuor, Mr. Lartey, who promised to contest the 2004 general elections to implement his domestication policies, said his constant trip abroad has become too much and called on him to put a stop to it.

He said Ghana has at the moment been engulfed with so many problems, including the popular Yendi crisis, but instead of President Kufuor staying at home to find a lasting solution to them, he prefers to travel outside to solve others' problems when he has not quenched the fire at his own backyard.