Open letter to President John Agyekum Kufuor

Dear Mr. President, Since your NPP administration has been caught abandoning the ship of ?zero tolerance for corruption? and setting sail on the yacht of ?amassing illegal wealth?, I have put together suggestions/ADVICE to help your government win the 2004 elections

Suggestion I: Rename Ministry

Premise: In an interview with the chronicle newspaper, Horrible (sorry, Honorable) Alhaji Musa Moctar Bamba said his responsibilities at the Office of the President was to help NPP activists obtain visas to travel abroad, go on hadj, obtain admission to Universities, purchase vehicles confiscated by the CEPS, and provide other such miscellaneous unorthodox and improper assistance requested of the President.

Suggestion: If these are the primary responsibilities of the office of presidential affairs then, I will suggest Bamba?s successor should be given the title Deputy Minister of NPP Affairs. NPP chairman Botwe will be the right choice to head that Ministry, i.e. if you, Mr. President, decide to give up that post.

Suggestion II: Create a new Ministry

Premise: Given that Hon. Alhaji Musa Bamba was a Deputy Minister to nobody and had no portfolio, it is difficult to deny that he was basically doing what he was asked to do by somebody higher than him.

Suggestion: Mr. President, I will suggest you create a new Ministry called Ministry for 419 Affairs. You, Mr. President, will be directly in charge. Hon. Alhaji Musa Bamba shall be your deputy and the special assistants will be made up of our big brothers - Nigerians. Why Nigerians? When it comes to 419, we need not look far for foreign consultants.

Suggestion III: Create another new Ministry

Premise: When I visited Ghana in December 2003, I almost shed tears when I saw how Accra and Tema have been engulfed in heaps of refuse, even though there is a whole ministry responsible for the beautification of Accra - along with AMA.

Suggestion: Create a new ministry called: Ministry for the clearing of refuse in Accra. Before beautification can start, we?ll have to first clear up the rubbish.

Suggestion IV: Don?t waste time & money on Military

I?ve noticed you?ve increased the salary of military personal and continue to focus on improving their lives, all in a desperate attempt to prevent them from staging a coup d'etat

Wofa JAK, does Georgia, Haiti ring a bell? The days of military coups are over. If you don?t perform, it?s a popular uprising that will bring you down and you may find yourself exiled in Morocco, where you?ve been saving your ill-gotten wealth. So concentrate on improving the ordinary man?s life.

And when the time comes, don?t expect the Americans, to whom you sold Ghana?s sovereign rights, to come to your aid. Aristide learnt it the hard way.

Take a look at Ivory Coast and Haiti and mend your ways, for Ghana is not immune to chaos. The day of accountability will surely soon come and when it does Liberia will look like a tea party

Before I sign off, I will like to congratulate you on being adjudged the? best president the world ever had?. That makes you a better leader than Mandela, Nkrumahako, JFK, De Gaulle, Gandhi, and those leaders who made Singapores, Malaysia, Taiwan, etc what they are today.

Your suffering son
Kojo OPoku