‘If gov’t buys sheep, say it’s a cow’ attribution affected me - Baba Jamal

The deputy Minister for Employment and Labour Relations, Baba Jamal, has revealed the infamous “if government buys sheep, say it’s a cow” quote attributed to him had really affected him.

Mr. Jamal in 2011 was captured on an audio recording allegedly threatening to sack workers of the Information Services Department (ISD) if they failed to project the then Mills government in good light.

“Yours is to make government look good, whatever the circumstance. If the government buys sheep and gives it as a gift, you are free to say it is a cow. You are free to say that. If the colour of the sheep is black, you can say it was a white colourful cow,” he allegedly said per the audio recording.

He continued: “…If you take negative public [issue], you give it to us secretly. If we hear you have leaked it to the public we will fire you and we will defend it. I am just making it clear.

“We are going to the elections next year, so the MCEs, any ISD staff who is going against his ethics or mandate let us see him quickly before he sees us out.”

But, speaking on Starr Chat Wednesday, Mr. Jamal retorted that the voice on the audio recording was not his and that it was doctored.

“…The voice with me and the journalists was absolutely a concoction. That was never my voice,” he said emphatically.

He, however, revealed that the first day he heard it himself he nearly believed that it was him because when he heard the voice “the way they mimicked it …I was asking myself when did I hold this meeting.”

Asked whether the supposed doctored voice attributed to him was the reason why he is so quite these days, he said “so when I heard that it really got to me and I became so mesmerized.”

“It really affected me as a person and my moral principles because as a Muslim one of the worst things you don’t want to happen to you is for anybody to say you’re a liar or you’re a hypocrite or somebody who wants to teach people how to lie. So when that thing happened it actually affected me,” he told Nana Aba Anamoah who is sitting in for regular host Bola Ray.