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Vociferous youth activist of the governing National Democratic Congress has mounted a ferocious defence yet of the comments of a deputy Information Minister, Baba Jamal, who admonished staff of the Information Services Department to project government in positive light as per their mandate and ethics or get the sack. Mr Felix Ofosu Kwakye says Baba Jamal�s statement that, �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,� was simply a reminder to the ISD workers of their duty to do PR for the government. �The issue is this, stating that if they do not perform their functions as expected of them they will be fired is in order,� he asserted. �Again, that small portion about �you are free to say government has given a cow if it is a sheep that has been given� for me is insignificant; it doesn�t change anything and for people to dwell on that portion to create the impression that Baba was up to some clandestine activity to unduly get Information Service Department staff to do things that are unethical is most unfortunate,� he added. Mr Kwakye who is also described as an oil and gas analyst, was speaking on Joy FM's Newsfile programme, that also airs on Multi TV, and accused the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) - with the support of the media � of deliberately over-flogging the issue as part of an agenda to tarnish the image of the deputy Information Minister. Supporting his argument, the Deputy Majority Leader of Parliament, Mr Rashid Pelpuo said the comments could only be taken for the joke that Baba Jamal himself said they were. He said Baba Jamal has no power to sack any public official and therefore could not have been serious when he said, �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.� The Wa Central MP however maintained that public office holders must be careful of their utterances as what they say could be subject to all kinds of interpretation if they speak ambiguously or misuse literary devices. The Editor-In-Chief of the New Crusading Guide newspaper, Malik Kweku Baako said he was surprised that the Deputy Information Minister after conceding his statements were inappropriate would turn around and seek rather tenuously to defend the comments by saying he was joking. He said Baba Jamal's attempt at seeking solace under similar comments made by a former Information Minister under the Kufuor regime, Asamoah Boateng, did not exonerate in anyway. He said nowhere did Mr Asamoah Boateng state that staff of the ISD could call a sheep a cow as Mr Jamal was urging done. The Executive Director of the Danquah Institute, Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, said admonishing people to exaggerate and lie about the government�s achievement with the primary objective of winning an election could not be a joke. For him, it appeared the minister himself is confused as to the difference between projecting the government positively and projecting the government untruthfully. "It doesn�t necessarily mean you can�t highlight the positive aspects � that is fine � you can even embellish the positive aspects but there is a difference between embellishment and pure falsehood and to me that was the message he was sending to them,� he added. Gabby rejected suggestions that Baba Jamal meant no harm for he also warned the staff of the ISD to uphold the ethics of their profession. �As far as I believe he (Jamal) is concerned, the ethics of an ISD employee is to do the bidding of government� just read the statement again, as far he was concerned the government has an election to win and it�s important that they do the ethical thing and the ethical thing is that - project the government positively [no matter the circumstance], even if it means changing sheep into a cow,� he noted.