But, when Dr. Grace Bediako is ordered out of her office while outside the country, The Chronicle smells a rat. To add to the mystery, her deputy, Dr. Opoku Manu Asare, is also on orders to leave his schedule. We learnt on our usual rounds that Dr. Asare rushed to the office yesterday to hand over his brief, virtually angry.

Our reading has picked up Prof. Francis Dodoo, the man whose leadership of the Ghana Olympic Committee was propelled by a powerful cartel at the seat of Government, and now Chairman of the Board of Directors at the Ghana Statistical Service, as being the man at the helm of the scheme to push out the two key personnel at the Statistical Service.

Yesterday, top officials of the Statistical Service were locked up in a meeting without their boss. Dr. Bediako is outside the country on official duties. The fact that the new overlords at the Castle, could not even wait for the return of the head, tells everything about the clandestine nature of the directive.

Very spurious reasons like the inability of the service to exploit donor facilities, is being touted as the main reason why the authorities are asking the head of the service to depart.

But, The Chronicle can hazard a more plausible reason. We have the hunch that the release of district and constituency figures of the 2010 Population and Housing Census has everything to do with what amounts to a coup d'etat at the Statistical Service.

We have the feeling that a lot untoward is cooking in this drama. Dr. Bediako is not every Ghanaian's ideal leader at the Statistical Service, given that inflation figures cooked from her office that appear to have no bearing on the rise of the cost of goods and services in the country, as well as the very haphazard manner in which the 2010 Population Census was organised, with a number of people not captured.

What is more worrying is that Dr. Bediako and her deputy are being removed, we dare state, to make way for more pliant leaders who would do the bidding of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in government.

We have the hunch that their removal has everything to do with the 2012 elections, and precisely, the compilation of population figures to comply with the gargantuan gerrymandering scheme being planned to justify the creation of more constituencies, in what is regarded as the NDC's strongholds, throughout the country.

As usual, officialdom would deny this assertion. But, we are not perturbed. We are firmly of the view that the 'proceed on leave' directive at the Statistical Service is a carefully orchestrated coup d'état.

We are still analyzing the likely impact of the decision to get rid of the two leaders, and what was so important about the decision that it could not even wait for the Government Statistician, who is out on official assignment.

We are getting the impression though, that before we go to the polls in 10 months time, a number of strange decisions would have been taken in the name of the leadership of this nation.

We urge all Ghanaians to follow events carefully, before the elections are organised, robbed of its fairness and even playing field.

Source: Ghanaian Chronicle