Hotel Kufuor: President Is NOT Childish - Botwe

In his usual brisk tone, the effervescent Minister of Information, Dan Botwe has argued that it is impossible and unthinkable for anybody to suggest that President Kufuor will be so childish as to buy a hotel and put his son's name on it when he is aware that his name and his son's are almost identical.

"How can anybody think that it is the President who owns a hotel and just because he wants somebody to front for him, and because he doesn't want people to know that he has used his son's name? Give him some credit. How can anybody think like that? It will not be possible.

"Even children display some intelligence. How on earth can you expect that President Kufuor buys a hotel, he want to hide it so that nobody would know that he has bought it, the best way to hide it is to use his son John Kufuor's name on it. I mean, it is not possible, it doesn't make sense. Not only that, he hasn't done it, he posited.

Speaking on Radio Gold, on Monday, May 31, 2005, the information minister said President Kufuor did not advise his son against buying the hotel when he discussed it with him because the President does not believe in politics of Machiavellian tactics of deceit and conspiracy.

"The President is the right man for the country now. Because, the way he does his politics, he doesn't believe in conspiring, he doesn't believe in scheming. He says let's do things clean. "Not because, he thinks that if I'm doing something good people should know that it is good, once my heart and my mind is clear and pure, stated.

Mr Botwe pointed out that the President's son as a Ghanaian and with a sound mind has the right to buy a divested state owned enterprise if he has the means much less a private property.

"Even in divestiture, assuming it was a government property, as the son of the President and a Ghanaian, he has every right to go and buy a property of government being divested."

"Maybe in that case, you would say that once it is government property that is being sold, if I buy it people may think that because I'm President's son, I got it cheaper. But for a private property, why not. So we can deny the President's son from doing business, why? "Even in that case, there is absolutely nothing illegal, nothing unethical about it".