The complaint by the office of the former President, over the change in security personnel guarding Rawlings? residence has been dismissed as a ?case of misplaced ownership of that which one does not have?.

This is because the former President Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings, by consequence of his own conduct, has no guards as he is entitled to, since he threw out those offered him by the state.

These are the comments of Mr Ferdinand O. Ayim, Special Assistant to the Minister of Information and Presidential Affairs. He stated these in an exclusive interview with the Daily Guide yesterday.

?The Policemen outside the residence of the former President are security personnel on public property and stationed there by the government which is concerned about the welfare of the former President and government is determined to provide the former president full protection?, he said.

Mr Ayim recalled that when the security detail of the former President was changed last year from military to Police personnel, the former President threw them out ?in a manner that showed his contempt, not only for the government, but the Police Service in particular?.

He stressed that the state is enjoined by law to be present whenever there is a sign of a threat to someone?s life or the likelihood of someone being a threat to state security. And for that, no permission is needed from anybody.

On the alleged assassination threat against the former President, Mr Ayim dismissed it as ?the adoption to an old trick that failed to work even when it was first used?. He referred to the claim by the former President when he was in power that an imminent coup against his government had been placed on the Internet.

?It was, I believe, the very first time the so-called coup plotters had announced their intentions so publicly and so well in advance and thus taken away their own biggest advantage ? which is the element of surprise?.

Describing the Internet as a ?piece of magic for the serious and the banal?, he wondered why any serious person would make so much capital out of an assassination plot leaked through the Internet.

The irony of it all, he said, was that those who are trumpeting the assassination scare are claming they would not report it to the security agencies because they do not trust they would protect them.

Citing the general responsibilities of government, he said that Jerry Rawlings? violent protest notwithstanding, the government went ahead and kept the Police there because, ?it has a vested interest in safeguarding his security?.

He described as amazing the former President?s protests today about changes in personnel that he did not have in the first place.

Asked whether it was proper to station Police personnel within the precincts of the former President?s house against his wishes, Mr Ayim made it clear that ?the state is obliged to offer protection to anybody whose life it may deem to be in danger as long as it does not trespass on private property by so doing?.

He said that the Police and security forces, ?which have so far distinguished themselves as a responsible group without the hitherto disgraceful record of human rights violations?, are not within the former President?s compound, but outside it and on public property.

Mr Victor Smith, an aide and Special Assistant to the former President gave hints of the alleged assassination attempt on Rawlings in an interview he granted the Statesman which was published as a front-page lead story in the paper last Friday, September 20, 2002.

He also repeated the same fears in an interview on Peace FM last Friday morning to confirm the Statesman story.