A member of the Communications Team of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) says he doubts if the candidate Mills Ghanaians voted for in 2008 is the President Mills they have. Mr Kwabena Sarpong is convinced that president Mills duped the people into voting him into power by making lofty promises of not only bettering the lot of the citizenry but also vigorously fighting the canker of corruption. Having been elected into office, President Mills, he said, has not only given his appointees a carte blanche to pilfer all they want, but has also treated with scant regard citizens who dare to question dealings of his ministers and other appointees. Mr Sarpong, speaking on Wednesday’s edition of Minority Caucus on Multi TV, said it was inconceivable that a president who faulted his predecessor for doing nothing in the face of newspaper publications of allegations of corruption against government officials, will turn around and ask people who level similar or even more credible allegations against his own appointees to produce proof. “J.E.A. Mills is corrupt, can I prove it, yes I can. You come and tell us you are going to ask your ministers to declare their assets within [weeks] after coming into office. In a question and answer session (with journalists), you tell the press, ‘go and ask the minister whether he has declared his assets.’ Did the press appoint the minister? You told us that you will let those people declare their assets… and when we ask you, you tell us ‘oh please go and ask them,’” he stated. Mr Sarpong recounted the president’s response to a question regarding the conduct of a former Youth and Sports Minister Alhaji Mohammed Muntaka Mubarak who allegedly doctored documents and secured a visa to travel with a lady to Germany. The president told journalists the minister’s action was an act of indiscretion and proceeded to ask whether Alhaji Muntaka was the first minister to spend state resources on his girlfriend. Those comments of President Mills according to Mr Sarpong could not have come from a president who is sincerely committed to fighting corruption. “If you do this, how can your minister be afraid? How can your minister put on the breaks when he is doing something bad because you will defend him, you will support him,” he asked. According to him, what was even worse was the decision of the government to punish the officers at the Ministry of Youth and Sports who blew the whistle on the minister. “And the man who leaked this information was dismissed from his office though he was supposed to be protected by law (the Whistle Blowers Act) and then we have a Law Professor as a head of state!” Mr Sarpong said the governing NDC must stop perpetrating fraud on the people of Ghana by persistently hoisting the president as a holy person or a saint who will not engage in corruption for there cannot be culpability in corruption than a leader looking the other way while his people cart away state resources. He said the mantra that our leaders are good but are often surrounded by bad corrupt people must cease. “From today we must stop saying that. It’s the leader who is bad. It’s the leader who is corrupt because it’s the leader who appoints these people and if [he doesn’t] discipline them,” we cannot continue to say he is a good leader. He said the government must explain why the president publicly announced he will not accept hampers probably because of their tendency to corrupt, when at the same time a Presidential Aide, Mr Stan Dogbe, took GHC169,000 and said he used part of the money to buy hampers for journalists. Mr Sarpong also took issues with what he called a blatant abuse and violation of the anti-corruption legislations put in place by the Kufuor government citing the Public Procurement Law, the Financial Administration Act and the Whistle Blowers Act. “The man of God who comes in and says he is going to rule by the book... has told us that if he even sees a newspaper publication, he is going to act on it. Now what do we see? Complete abuse of the system that was put in place to stop corruption. The system that was put in place to stop corruption – the Procurement Law – is today being abused completely,” he stated. Section 40 of the Procurement Law makes provisions for purchasing under emergency and under emergency you can do sole sourcing where only one contractor is invited and given the job or restricted tendering where two bids are invited and one is selected. For emergency procurement under the law, Mr Sarpong, said, value for money audit is not done. This provision, according to him, was being blatantly abused and exploited by the government for corrupt purposes. He questioned under what circumstances the Dansoman road in Accra and other road contracts could be awarded under emergency. “Is the president aware of the abuse of the Procurement Law”? host of the programme, Mr Yaw Boabeng Asamoah asked. Another panelist, Mr Newton Ofei said even though the NDC appropriated former president Kufuor’s statement that corruption was as old as Adam, the party had tended to agree with Mr Kufuor after assuming the reins of government. He said he was aware of situations where people were arrested and handed over to the police at various embassies and missions in Ghana because of false representations they made in order to secure visas and yet when a minister under president Mills, Alhaji Muntaka did a similar thing, the president didn’t see anything wrong with it. He believes the NDC, having espoused lofty moral values in opposition, had completely abandoned those values and in some instances referred to things under the NPP government which they condemned to justify similar actions. Story by Malik Abass Daabu/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana