Rumor Mill of Tuesday, 10 August 2004

Source: Palaver

NPP sells cars to cronies

Is it true that .... Almost all the cars that the departing NDC Ministers and officials were made to give up under the most humiliating and embarrassing circumstances in January 2001, resulting in the tension and the strained relations between the NDC and NPP Governments have been sold by the NPP Government to their cronies and favourites at giveaway prices without going through any auction process and in flagrant violation of the provisions of the Auctions Sales Law, 1989, PNDCL 230, that the fraudulent sales were conducted by and under the aegis of a so-called "Auctions Committee" chaired by Alhaji Musa Moctar Bamba, MP for Wenchi West and disgraced former Deputy Minister to no Minister, which Auctions Committee was constituted by Mr. Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, then Minister for Presidential Affairs and Chief of Staff, and which fraudulent sales could be conducted because the NPP Government has bought for each Minister and Deputy Minister a brand new saloon car and a brand new 4-Wheel Drive vehicle, which makes It clear that the NPP Government did not really need those NDC Ministers' cars for duty purposes but as payoffs for their hangers-on and as part of the propaganda to discredit the former NDC Ministers and is also symptomatic of the vindictive and vicious nature of the Kufuor administration; and is it also true that as far back as February 2003, the Ghana Auctioneers Association drew the attention of President Kufuor to the fraudulent auction sales but our lame duck President, in typical "see no evil, hear no evil, smell no evil" type of administration where corruption or allegations of corruption are concerned, actually did nothing and allowed the state to lose billions of cedis in revenue?