I have invited the Press here today in order to make public my comments on the recent allegation made against me by President J. A. Kufuour, which I consider to be quite serious.

While I was away from the country last week, the press reported a statement made by President Kufuor during the campaign for the Offinso South Parliamentary seat. In that statement at Abofour on Sunday, 22nd October, 2006, he said, and I quote from the Daily Graphic of Tuesday, 24th October, 2006, that:

“The President, Mr. John Agyekum Kufuor, has taken former President Jerry John Rawlings to task for soliciting for funds from an oil-rich country to “overthrow” the NPP government”.

The paper continued its reportage of what was President Kufuor’s frontal attack on the former NDC administration and its leader. Even though the NDC has already reacted to the wild accusation leveled at me, I consider the claim that I am soliciting funds to “overthrow” the NPP government serious enough to warrant my personal reaction.

I wish, therefore, to take this opportunity to state emphatically to Ghanaians and all who care to know that I have never solicited and will never solicit funds for the purpose of conducting a coup d’etat in Ghana. I do not know where this allegation is coming from and I wish to challenge President Kufuour to tell Ghanaians which ‘oil-rich country’ I contacted and when I did so for the specific purpose of requesting funds to carry out an overthrow of the government. The allegation is so wild as to require substantiation in the eyes of Ghanaians.

I have been in and out of a number of countries in the Middle-East at their request in recent months to either fulfill speaking engagements or to hold consultations on the proposed ‘Economic Forum’ that will be situated in that region. I am grateful to the countries of the region for their respect and trust for me and will continue to respond positively to such overtures in spite of the malicious comments of President Kufuour.

The claim by the President is so strange that I can only say that he has now resorted to an outright perversion of the truth to salvage the image of the NPP government in face of recent scandals.

I am not surprised that he has chosen to implicate countries of the Middle East because the whole world now knows that he is carrying out the command of his western masters whose policy it is to vilify Middle Eastern countries and their religion. For President Kufuour, the answer to a western request to jump in denigration of Middle Eastern countries is not only, ‘Yes, Sir, but also ‘How high should I jump!’ It is indeed sad that the President should be destroying foreign relations that have benefited Ghana so much in the past.

Secondly, the claim of the President is so completely off the mark as to do no credit to his intelligence service which has been under pressure to manufacture stories to discredit the NDC party. I challenge them therefore to give Ghanaians details of my alleged attempt to overthrow the government.

I have noticed over a period that President Kufuour has developed the habit of attacking me personally whenever his administration is in trouble and so I am not surprised by this recent attack. The surprise is the extent of misrepresentation that it has entailed. In my view, he has resorted to this dirty tactic to try to draw away the nation’s attention on the scandals, corruption and cocaine allegations that the NPP and its associates are heavily embroiled in at this time. I would advise that he concentrates on the clearing of their name rather than seek to denigrate my hard-won reputation.

As far as my recent trip abroad is concerned, the media has widely reported my speeches in Euskirchen and Hamburg in Germany and at the South Bank University in London to convince Ghanaians that I was not on a coup trip. In my speeches, I informed my audience about the situation of bad governance, corruption and abuse of human rights in Ghana under the NPP administration as an illustration of how the African dream of democracy and good governance is beginning to become a nightmare. I shall continue to state this point of view to those who care to listen not only because it involves the NPP government but more importantly because the truth should be universal at all times.

Even though President Kufuour has targeted my family and me for persecution I wish to let him k now that I refuse to be intimidated and will continue to expose the wrong-doings of his government in the difficult task of making them give them up. These scandals and abuses have been talked and written about at length and I will not bother to repeat them. Suffice it to say that Ghanaians are entitled to a cleaner government of integrity than the present government is giving them; Ghanaians are entitled to a more unified country than President Kufuor’s government is committed to; Ghanaians are entitled to a more national civil and security services, including the Armed Forces, than the NPP government is prepared to tolerate, and Ghanaians are entitled to a more accountable government than they are compelled to live under at this time.

I wish to conclude with the observation that it is indeed sad that President Kufuour should be making so many timid statements about a possible coup d’etat in Ghana when his government is supposed to be assuring investors about the attractiveness of the country as an investment destination. I hope that Ghanaians are now seeing that the NPP’s so-called property-owing democracy is to benefit themselves only not to lay the basis for economic policies that will lift our people from the doldrums of poverty, disease and illiteracy.
I leave the rest for our people to judge for themselves.
I thank you