PROF. MIKE Ocquaye, former Minister of Communication and one of the presidential aspirants of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), has condemned the call by Dr Kwame Addo-Kufuor that all former Cabinet Ministers contesting the NPP presidential election should submit contracts they awarded while in office to forensic auditing.

He accused his colleague of deceiving the public into thinking that institutions mandated by the constitution to do so had slackened in their operations. To him, Addo-Kufuor was trying to let the public believe that some of them had done something wrong which should not be so.

"I don't have the power to do that. The President who is the appointing authority can do that. The Parliament and the Auditor General can also do that because they have the power to do it. The system of auditing was very good and I think that the call was very unfortunate," he said.

Prof. Ocquaye who wrote the Stolen Verdict, made this disclosure in an exclusive interview with this paper last after he had submitted his completed presidential nomination forms said though he had nothing to hide as far as his administration was concerned, the call was untenable.

?The Auditor General is there to do his job. Who am I to request for forensic auditing? For what and what are they talking about? I am perfectly clean but his call is wrong,? he said.He revealed how under his tenure, he formed a committee to look into the tree stump issue that came up at the Volta River Authority and how he handled the privatization of Ghana Telecom and that of Westel?s without any problems.

Prof Ocquaye noted that it was hypocritical for anybody including the former Defence Minister to say that all the Ministers should subject themselves for forensic auditing. ?I believe that there is nothing wrong going on because all the contracts awarded under our ministries were done through the Procurement Law. We don?t award contracts and therefore I don?t need to offer myself for any auditing?.

The NPP aspirant noted that no ex-minister had the power to go to his former Ministry to request that his contracts should be audited, adding that, ?If any minister says that, he is misleading the people of Ghana. It does not lie in his domain to do that and that person is trying to be hypocrite?, he said. He urged the media to educate the public on the procedures of awarding contracts through the Procurement Law, so that nobody would dwell on the ignorance of people and mislead them.

Responding to the structure and the composition of delegates, Prof. Ocquaye stated that the party needed to continue with the procedures of the 1992, 1996 and 1998 by giving free room to constituency executives to do what the constitution of the party bade them to. Prof. Ocquaye, NPP Member of Parliament for Dome-Kwabenya in the Greater Accra region, supported Hon. Felix Kwasi Adjapong, another presidential aspirant?s claim that District Chief Executives and Ministers should distance themselves from working for a particular presidential aspirant.

?They should leave the party executives alone. Everybody who believes in the separation of powers of the State must not be involved so that it does not create any wrong impression. They must be careful,? he said. He admonished the DCEs and the Ministers further to be careful. ?They should distance themselves from what should be done by the party executives. The people should be left to fairly play their game,? stressing that ?a word to the wise is enough. If you want peace and unity to prevail at home you must avoid doing things that would create trouble.?

According to him, he was ready to contest the race with ideas, issues, and strategic and human empowerment oriented issues.

STOLEN VERDICT

He revealed his position as a true party man who was very pivotal in drafting the party?s constitution and single-handedly wrote the Stolen Verdict of the NPP and many others.