<<Print>>

New Patriotic Party Parliamentary Candidate for Ablekuma South, Ms Ursula Owusu says no sane person would make the kind of argument the Deputy Information Minister, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa and his colleagues are making, that NPP flagbearer Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo is a hypocrite because he supported the payment of a judgement debt that his predecessor, Dr. Obed Asamoah, from previous NDC government sanctioned. �If you read the press statement (from the Information Ministry) you can tell that no sane person � excuse my language � would make such an argument,� she said on Metro TV Good Morning Ghana on Tuesday. Mr. Okudzeto Ablakwa held a press conference on Monday and disclosed that in 2001, Nana Addo, then the Attorney-General under the NPP government, directed government to pay $1.1million to a Swiss company, Great Cape as part of judgement debt awarded the company for breach of a contract to supplier clinker in way back 1978. The Deputy Minister described the NPP flagbearer as a hypocrite for pretending he did not support payment of judgement debt when he said that given the opportunity, he, Nana Addo, would rather commit all the moneys being used to pay judgement debts to support his free SHS education policy. Speaking on Metro TV Good Morning Ghana show on Tuesday, Ms Ursla Owusu said the Deputy Minister and his colleagues at the Information Ministry conveniently ignored the fact that the debt in question was sanctioned by Dr. Obed Asamoah, the then Attorney-General under the previous NDC government. She said Nana Addo only came in to implement what his predecessor Dr. Obed Asamoah sanctioned and even started paying before the NDC lost power, but the Deputy Minister hid that side of the story from Ghanaians. Ms. Ursula Owusu said Nana Addo�s letter to the Ministry of Finance recommending the payment to Great Cape, he made categorical reference to the Dr. Obed Asamoah�s recommendations for payment way back in November 1997, but the Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa chose to ignore that important fact. According to her, Dr. Asamoah and the previous NDC government had admitted to the violating the rights of Great Cape and had accepted to pay them and had indeed started paying them before they left power so Nana Addo, being law abiding, only came to implement measures to salvage the NDC�s own mess. She said it was therefore surprising that the country�s Ministry of Information would set aside such very important parts of the story and concoct their own version for political expediency. �If those statements had been made on a political platform I would have excused it but for our whole Ministry of Information, which is fast becoming a charade and subjecting itself to continuous public ridicule to concoct its own version of the story just for political expediency is rather mind boggling,� she said. Ms.Ursula Owusu said as one time Attorney-General, Nana Addo was fully aware that judgement debts had been around and would continue to be around for a long time, but the problematic issue is the recent rush by the Mill-led government to pay judgement debts to its cohorts, and also to capture such debts in the national budget, purportedly to embarrass the previous NPP government. Meanwhile, the founder and leader of United Renaissance Party, Charles Kofi Wayo has also said Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa is sometimes st...d for make such arguments. But a member of the NDC�s Communication Team, Felix Kwakye argued that the logic in the argument of the Ministry of Information was that Nana Addo had sought to create the impression he had never recommended the payment of judgement, which is wrong.