However let this person move among the top professional footballers in the world, who earn over $80,000.00 a week and the poverty line would be drawn. While these school dropout soccer stars are signing cheques to purchase 25-seater Gulf Stream private jets, our local millionaire would be bargaining for a reduction in the price of a Mercedes Benz car engine part.

The poor are poor comparatively, with others around them. In other words, among one hundred persons who earn at least $10,000.00 a month, those in the lower rankings are the poor.

So also among another one hundred persons who earn at most $ 10.00 a month, those in the upper rankings are the richest. So therefore poverty is also as relative as the word poor.

One fact we must know is that the poor would always be with us. In any situation one could be poor. A person with abundant material wealth may be poor academically and so would have to employ the services of an accountant to handle the books of his businesses for him.

One thing however, is that in our part of the world and as in the rest of it, whenever someone says he or she is poor, we look at their material standings. What the person has and has not got.

The people, who lack material and financial resources to live comfortable lives, are generally the poor in society. They are the most vulnerable just as they can be also very important. What is most interesting is that they have a great potential, an untapped or unexploited resource that could turn fortunes round for nations.

If only they have the necessary push! Bill Gates, then as a dropout was heading towards a becoming destitute perhaps, when something happened. He is now the world's wealthiest man.

Most of the world's richest sportsmen and women, artists and talented persons once lived and grew up in abject poverty, however with determination and sometimes luck they are where they are now.

Under no circumstance should such poor people be mocked and ridiculed. They are humans and as humans they deserve respect. In a situation where someone self-elects himself to right the wrongs in society and improve upon the lives of the generally poor, one expects that in all honesty this should be the case.

It is therefore a sad case of dishonesty, armed robbery and devil driven actions when one takes advantage of the poor to selfishly achieve their hidden agenda.

In Ghana in the late 1979, a man was mistakenly released from justifiable prison custody to lead a bloody "revolution". This man came back to steal from us at gunpoint our constitutional right to be ruled by those we choose.

He then had a badly maintained car and a house full of unpaid bills. H e called himself poor even though about 90% of the poor in Ghana would have wished they had old battered yet operational cars and some furniture. That was in 1981.

Our man Jerry John Rawlings had started living.

He said he spoke for the poor and promised to get them good health services, at least two square meals a day, adequate shelter and job opportunities.

He brought in his own brand of socialism. In fact he surrounded himself with dyed-in-the-wool communists, socialist and neo-communists, yet by his conduct he was only taking advantage of every situation to run his own agenda.

In fact my friend Amega, in self-imposed exile, once said of Jerry. "He is a Radical Capitalist Reformist". From a lowly beginning as a working class man, which had more to do with his inability to manage his life, Jerry under cover of the seat of government had become in our terms the richest Ghanaian today.

Officially declaring two houses which could easily accommodate twenty families of four, and owning a fleet of cars, which turns his houses into large car showrooms when they all come to berth, it is rumored that these are only tips of icebergs.

With speedboats to add to his comfort Jerry even attempted to snatch a state owned boat belonging to VRA. He almost gained ownership of an aircraft, the Gulf Stream jet.

Today if Jerry is so choked up due to the idea that he and his NDC are going to stay under NPP rule for another four years, it is due to the fact he cannot wait to lay claim on this jet and other state properties like the magnificent Australia House at Switchback Road in Accra and the Colonial House in the VRA quarters at Natriku, near Akuse.

His claim that he is poor is to relate his current conditions to be in the same level as those of the lower class. If this is the case then, we must all doff our hats to those in authority and sing praises to God for then there is no poverty stricken person in Ghana.

This is not the case however, since his adventure into transforming the poor into rich or ability to afford had wholly failed. He must be humble enough to say that his life is much better off now than it was in 1981.

Last week, he went on the streets together with fewer than expected supporters to demonstrate against increment in fuel prices. It is a bit deceptive on his part to be involved in such an adventure since in 1983 he increased fuel over 100% for premium and kerosene, and over 90% for diesel oil.

This was when he overthrew a legally constituted government for being anti-poor. When workers wanted to demonstrate against these increases, in a budget said to be anti-poor, the government quietly put a muzzle on their mouths.

Today Jerry can hit the streets and shout for the poor. Ridiculously he covered part of the distance in the comfort of his out-of-the-world saloon car.

A case of ridiculing the poor.

Also Kwesi Pratt Jnr. who promised us that at least 50,000 people would hit the streets, failed to get even 10% of that number. In fact the average number speculated was about 1%.

Kwesi had promised that something would happen today, Monday March 7, 2005. Could it be a coup d'etat or a revolution by the masses or bombing of vital installations?

If the world market price of fuel had gone up 65% since we last priced our fuel, what justification should Jerry, Kwesi and co. have to challenge an increment of 50%?

Who must pay the bills for our consumptions, when we have a government doing its best to provide services for a people with the tradition of the ability of dodging payments of taxes?

Jerry Rawlings has transformed his life from a junior officer who could hardly afford to pay for his mess bills to someone who lives in affluence. Yet he claims to be poor.

Kwesi Pratt Jnr. has transformed his life from a communist who would not be caught dead living in affluence to someone who now rides in a Mercedes Benz saloon car and lives in comfort of his out-of-reach-of-the-urban-poor house.

He also claims to be on the side of the poor. This is a case of ridiculing the poor. Any standard definition of poor and poverty?