The Member of Parliament for Asokwa, Mr Maxwell Kofi Jumah says President John Mills must rise up to the demands of the Ghanaian people for an enlightened leadership. He said the government’s decision to increase prices of petroleum products in the very month that the country pumped crude oil was not only curious but baffling. Mr Kofi Jumah was speaking to journalists at the end of a protest march organized by political pressure group, Alliance for Accountable Governance. Organizers of the march say they hoped to force government to reduce the price of the products. Mr Kofi Jumah, one of few leaders of the opposition New Patriotic Party who joined in the march Wednesday, said the president had grown deaf to the plight of Ghanaians and that the government had become at best insensitive, and at worst cynical. In an apparently well rehearsed narrative, the Asokwa MP said the economic situation had become so precarious that his wife and daughter had been wailing because of hunger and when he dashed to the market to buy some plantain, the prices had been increased so exorbitantly, that he couldn’t buy so he returned home empty handed. His daughter, according to Mr Jumah, exasperated, said she wanted to be taken to school immediately. “When I took her to the school, there was no classroom for her sit in, or a dormitory for her to sleep in so the crying continued and in fact intensified,” the anecdote continued. He said if president Mills’ election campaign mantra of “I care for you” was not a political gimmick, the president must demonstrate his care for the people by reducing the prices of fuel to ameliorate the economic hardships of the citizenry which he said had been exacerbated by the fuel price hikes and their concomitant impact on the prices of other goods and services.