Former United Nations Senior Governance Advisor, Professor Baffour Agyeman-Duah, has stated that he is expecting that the Finance Minister, Hon Ken Ofori Atta, would resign from his position or the President would terminate his appointment in the coming days or weeks.
According to him, their refusal to do so could possibly lead Ghana into a constitutional crisis, which could further worsen the economic crisis the country is currently facing.
Presently, the Finance Minister, Hon Ken Ofori-Atta, is facing a vote of censure motion filed against him by the Minority caucus in Parliament over accusations of corruption and gross incompetence.
However, speaking in an interview, Prof. Agyeman-Duah indicated that, should the ongoing impasse happening in Ghana’s Parliament over the vote of censure continue, it may negatively affect the country’s financial relations with the outside world.
“Well my hope is that we will not get there. What I expect to happen in the coming days is perhaps the Finance Minister taking himself out of this dilemma, or the President just announcing that he’s displacing the Finance Minister. This is because it will just be tragic for these two individuals to lead the country into such a constitutional jam. We don’t want that.
“We all know the difficulties we are facing and in fact, what we’re not even thinking about is the very negative impact of this crisis on our international partners and our financial relations with the outside world. Somewhere else our market would have plummeted further.”
Prof Duah
According to him, no matter the path taken, it will still end with the Finance Minister getting censured.
“So in fact, we are doing ourselves a lot of ill if the President and the Finance Minister continue to be intransigent on this matter and not to appropriately respond to the ground swell of public demand for the displacement of the Finance Minister.”
Prof Duah
Ad-hoc Committee Formation
Prof. Agyeman-Duah who has described the formation of the eight member committee as a face-saving measure by the Speaker, Alban Bagbin, to pacify both factions of the House, says the entire hearing process is unnecessary.
The Speaker of Parliament constituted the eight member committee to probe the accusations leveled against the Minister and provide a detailed report within seven days.
For him, this matter should have been settled right on the floor of Parliament. “All this process of the committee, I don’t think it’s necessary. We are prolonging something that is inevitable”, he noted.
Ken Ofori Atta is to appear before the Ad hoc committee today November 17, as PIAC and GNPC come for hearing.
Member of Parliament for Assin Asokwa and co-chair of the Ad hoc committee, KT Hammond, at the first sitting Tuesday November 15, said the committee has decided that there must be evidence for the allegations that are being made.
The first Public Hearing by the eight-member Ad-hoc Committee sitting on the Censure motion was characterized by some heated exchanges, objections, and concerns over the admissibility of evidence. The hearing was held up because of a clash over the mode for tendering evidence at the Committee.
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