General News of Thursday, 26 April 2001

Source: Ghanaian Chronicle

'NDC Won't Win Court Case Against Government'

The President, Mr. John Agyekum Kufour has asserted that the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) would never win any court case against him and his government because they don't read the constitution well.

The President who expressed amusement about the NDC's new found love for the courts, and their rush to issue writs against the government on the least provocation, declared to Mr. Kweku Sakyi-Addo, the host of GTV's Kweku One on One " they haven't won against me and they will never win against me."

The NDC which can boast of a number of lawyers, has rushed to the Supreme Court on a number of occasions to issue writs against the Kufour government which just celebrated its hundredth day in office for commissions or omissions on the part of the new administration.

The latest of them being, the one seeking to restrain the government from replacing ex-President Rawlings' personal military security team with a police one.

Mr. Kufour recalled that while it took him three months on assuming office to get his cabinet in place, it took the NDC in 1993, five months to form a government, and therefore they had no case rushing to the court.

Commenting on why he stopped the former president from going to ride horses at Burma Camp, the seat of the Military High Command, he disclosed that he did that on grounds of political expediency.

According to him, the ex-president who just left office after twenty years, and as a former Commander in Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces, has a lot of leadership trappings around him to be allowed to frequent there anytime.

Also the ex-president, himself a former military man, has friends who are still in the military and in order not to infest the military with any sort of politics, it is best he stays away.

Asked whether his government didn't trust the ex-president, Mr. Kufour responded that it was not an issue of trust but political expediency.

Delving into the relationship between him and the ex-president, he said they had spoken on phone about the transition and on some occasion their mutual friends have brought them together.

President Kufour in the soul baring interview, responding to the charges of harassing his predecessor and NDC members through the bugging of phones, intoned that it is interesting the NDC, known for its human rights abuse record, should be complaining about being harassed.

He referred to the famous Selasi Djentu, the ex-boy friend ex-first daughter, Ezenator Rawlings, who was kept in the Castle's dungeon and given a clean shave.

To the president, the security of the state should be paramount and therefore if the police suspect any body of any subversive act, the police could pick him for questioning, without regard to any person, even if they are members of his own party.

Probably, mindful of the public gripe against his former boss, former Premier Busia for blocking traffic each day he went to and from his house at Odorkor to work at the Castle, Osu,, President Kufour expressed his embarrassment about the constant blaring of siren to stop traffic for him to go to work and back to his home at Airport residential area, each day.

"They shouldn't be called upon to stand by just for the president to go to work", saying, that the sirens should be used sparingly.

The president, he pointed out, is the property of the people and therefore if he is touted every day around, he becomes a nuisance to the public, whose property he is.

To put the issue to rest and not to incur any displeasure from the public, he asked that a Presidential palace with offices and a live-in quarters for the president on the model of Nigeria's Aso Rock, Burkina Faso, and Togo be built here.

"Ghana must not be different," he underscored.