Mr. Kwame Anyimadu Antwi, Chairman of the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee of Parliament, has stated that the Minority Caucus in parliament should have withdrawn the censure motion filed against the Finance Minister, Hon Kenneth Ofori-Atta.
This comes after the 8 member Ad-hoc Committee scrubbed two of the allegations contained in the petition of the Minority members of parliament.
Speaking in an interview the politician, who doubles as a lawyer noted that, he did not see the need for the motion to proceed after grounds one and three were struck out and the Minister providing answers to the remaining allegations.
“There were seven accusations that the Minority gave. The Committee said two of them he should not answer, but five of them he answered and when he had answered I would have thought that the Committee would come to a consensus to say that the Finance Minister has already done that, so there is no need to pursue this censorship motion. But they were still pursuing and I didn’t see any point in there. I think they should have withdrawn the motion.”
Mr Kwame Anyimadu
According to the chairman, the censure motion is ‘much ado about nothing.’
“If I want to speak on the censure motion, I am with the Finance Minister 100%”
Mr Kwame Anyimadu
It would be recalled that during the censure motion hearing last month, the Minority MPs presented pieces of evidence to support the seven allegations raised against the Finance Minister.
The allegations peddled by the Minority were fiscal recklessness, alarming incompetence , gross mismanagement of the Ghanaian economy, Conflict of interest, unconstitutional withdrawals from the Consolidated Fund, illegal payment of oil revenues into offshore accounts, deliberate and dishonest misreporting of economic data to Parliament.
However, on November 18, the Committee struck out grounds one and three of the list of seven allegations.
The decision of the committee was revealed by Dr Dominic Akuritinga Ayine, the Co-Chairman of the Parliamentary Ad-hoc Committee on Censure, and Member of Parliament (MP) for Bolgatanga East.
Ground One cited despicable conflict of interest; that Hon Ofori-Atta directly benefits from Ghana’s economic challenges as his companies receive commissions and other unethical contractual advantages, particularly from Ghana’s debt project.
Failure Of Censure motion
Unfortunately, the Minority caucus in Parliament were not able to succeed in their strive to remove Hon Ken Ofori-Atta from office.
The censure motion against Finance Minister failed to accumulate the required number of votes to succeed, as the Majority Members staged a walk-out from Parliament during the debate.
The motion, which was debated on Thursday December 8 and subsequently voted on, had only the Minority members being present to vote.
Dismissal of Finance Minister
Mr Kwame Anyimadu-Antwi further disclosed that public confidence in Ghana’s economy will be intensified should the Finance Minister Vacate his post. According to him, the presence of Ken Ofori-Atta at the leadership of the country’s treasury is not helping the Akuffo Addo led government.
Mr Anyinmadu indicated that, the earlier calls by the Majority MPs for Mr Ofori-Atta to leave office was based on the belief that his exit will boost public confidence in the economy. “I think people have confidence, but if the reshuffle had come, I think the confidnece would have been increased”, he stated.
The Chairman opined that the calls by the Majority Members of parliament for the minister to be removed were not tied to any misappropriation on Ofori Atta’s part, but rather the conviction that his exit will inspire hope in the economy.
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