After Wikileaks Secret Diplomatic Cables leaks

When President John Agyekum Kufuor told Ghanaians in his last week’s interview by his good friend Paul Adum Okyere that the allegations of ineptitude, corruption, cronyism and nepotism labelled on his eight years government by the famous wikileaks revelations is a mere rhetorical hearsay, it was all lies as usual.

His onetime Finance Minister and the man whose agility bolstered his first four years in office, Dr. Osafo Marfo has confirmed that the zero tolerance for corruption mantra of J.A Kufuor’s reign was just a ploy to fool Ghanaians. Following Wikileaks revealing exposure that the NPP government “disregarded the results of international tender tentatively awarded to Austrian company VAMED, with links to U.S. and UK company”, Osafo Marfo has been speaking to The Republic on how former President Kufuor maliciously swapped the deal in favour to sign a cheaper sole sourcing deal with an unknown Chinese company without any due diligence.

According to Dr. Osarfo Marfo, “everyone agreed that after due diligence and technical assessment of seventy applications, VAMED was the best hit among the firms which bided for the contract right for the construction and rehabilitation of the stadia. Obviously, his Excellency President Kufuor had no interest or respect for the laid down procurement and tender procedure that guided the decision of the technical committees mandated to execute the contract. “Of all the bids by the seventy firms, VAMED topped in all the categories and would have brought a better value for money.”

In his unnerving response to the catalogue of thug-waging allegations of corruption and gross impropriety against his government in the famous Wikileaks confidential diplomatic cable drops, John Agyekum Kufuor, the former President, attempted to employ public relations gimmicks to brush off the accusations.

“Look, I am a lawyer by profession, and I tell you that Wikileaks is no better than hearsay and hearsay is not the best evidence for a lawyer to stand on to be used in any case,” was how the former President responded when Paul Adom-Otchere, host of Good Evening Ghana, sought his opinion on the subject during an the exclusive television interview that was aired on Metro TV.

John Kufuor categorically denied corruption claims by Wikileaks cable revelations which are composed by observations of Diplomatic officials, members of his government and critical Ghanaians.

“ I was in government for eight years and can you cite any example where any Ghanaian citizen could complain that Kufuor’s government had sent out an assassination squad to go and do them in?” he asked.

Contrary to John Kufuor’s assertion that he “personally rejected the results of the stadium tender, because VAMED’s winning bid was for well over $300 million, and that he had acted in the interest of the Ghanaian public”, Mr. Osafo Marfo disclosed that even after technical evaluation by the competent tender board, the VAMED offer was better comparing with the Chinese one that his President single handed picked and gave the contract to.

According to a cabinet memorandum by the Minister for Education and Sports on the subject “report on the procurement of works (Stadia) for CAN 2008 sighted by the Republic, “following the award of the right to host CAN 2008, invitation to tenders to express interest in the procurement of Goods, Works and Services was published on 6th January, 2005 and procurement process has been followed in accordance with Public Procurement Act, 2003, Act 663, for the past seven months”.

Honourable Osafo Marfo who appeared sincere and frank during the 15minutes interview with The Republic at his West Airport residence, said that, prior to the suspicious obstruction of the tender process by Kufuor’s intervention, a properly constituted committee of technical and financial experts had conducted a thorough due-diligence to come up with the winner of the bid only for the president to veto the result in a “Rambo-style”. Osafo Marfo indicated in the Cabinet memorandum why the Shangai, the Chinese firm proposed by JA Kufuor was a bad deal.

Among other things, the Minister noted that coming after the bid process had been completed, they the government would have several outstanding issues to address before considering the President’s proposal. First of all, the Shanghai Group did not submit any bid by 7th February , 2005 to be considered by the Evaluation Committee.

Secondly, The Group expects the Government of Ghana to provide direct funding which served as basis for rejecting other firms who could not attract funding even though these firms could be very competitive.

The minister also intimated that the procurement Act makes it difficult to admit the Shanghai Group, given that several firms which did not meet the financial requirement were not shortlisted. “Some of the firms shortlisted have also been declared not wholly responsive because of their financial terms”. He noted among other things that “if on the other hand the recommendations arising out of the tender would be set aside, then we should marshal our forces and make a decision which we can defend nationally and internationally” Osafo Marfo, who obviously was frustrated by the president’s action said he had no power to challenge the president but to caution him about the consequence of setting aside well processed tender results for a virtually uninformed one. Incidentally, Kufuor was also defending other allegations of favouritism and gross disrespect for the procurement and tender processes.

Kufuor was quoted by the US diplomatic cables as arguing that while the Chinese offer is substantially lower, it also excludes many of the construction projects included in the original tender. So the two bids are not directly comparable. It may be recalled that the confederation of African Football (CAF) had specified that the minimum capacity of the stadia to be used should be 20,000 for the group matches and 10,000 for the opening match, semi-finals and final-match.