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Vetting chaos: We’ve seriously damaged our reputation—Majority Leader ‘weeps’

Source The Ghana Report

Chaotic scenes during the vetting of ministerial nominees on Thursday have left Majority Leader Mahama Ayariga worried about the damage to the image of Ghana’s Parliament.

“We have seriously damaged our reputation as a Parliament. It will take us a lot of effort to redeem ourselves, but I know that Ghanaians can forgive,” he lamented. “I am sorry that these scenes that we are seeing are being projected to the rest of the country and to the world…the Ghana parliament remains an envy of many parliaments.

A violent confrontation ensued between Majority and Minority MPs in parliament over the vetting of Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa as Foreign Affairs Minister and Kwabena Mintah Akandoh as Minister of Health.

The chaos erupted when the Minority MPs on the Appointments Committee asked to postpone the vetting of the two nominees to the next day, January 31.

This was because committee members had spent over 12 hours at the sitting, which had been prolonged extensively beyond 9 pm.

However, the Majority disagreed and insisted the process continued because they believed Minority Leader caused undue delays by asking many questions, which lasted over three hours when the Minister nominee for Communications, Digitalisation, and Innovation, Samuel Nartey George, took his turn in the hot seat to face the committee.

This disagreement escalated into a physical altercation between the legislators, with some Minority members disrupting the session by breaking tables and microphones.

The Majority MPs still stood their ground and insisted the vetting must continue, prompting the intervention of the police officers present.

This compelled Mr Ayariga to intervene and condemn the violent actions of the legislators.

“Please, let us not destroy that envious image that we have carved for ourselves to the rest of the world as a beautiful functioning democracy. I am pleading with all sides,” he stated.

Consequently, the vetting was postponed to Friday.

“As you can see, we would have continued, but logistically it is no longer possible to continue. The microphones have all been destroyed. The technical staff have closed, and they have gone home. Even if they were here the destruction of some of the equipment cannot be replaced tonight,” he explained.

“I am pleading with all sides that we should bring proceedings to an end. And tomorrow, given that the facilities here have been destroyed, by morning, we will designate a new location within the House to continue with the vetting of the nominees”.

He, however, cautioned members of the committee to desist from undue delays that cause agitations from aggrieved persons.

“When we are vetting, let’s make good use of the time allocated to us so that we can be efficient; we can vet as many people as possible so that we can have the ministers at the various ministries functioning and delivering on the commitments that Ghanaians endorsed at the polls by the way they voted,” he stressed.

In view of that, he said he would have discussions with his colleague, the Minority leader so that they can agree on time allocation for questions and how long to vet nominees.

“Let us be decent when we are doing the vetting. It is not right to spend 3-4 hours questioning a nominee. It provokes a lot of people. I am not saying we should not ask nominee questions, but let’s be moderate in our approach,” he concluded.

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