The Minority Leader in Parliament, Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu, has no idea why the Speaker of Parliament has summoned Members of Parliament back to the House from their recess, despite reports that it is due to the Minority’s call for investigations into the presidential Ford gift saga.
Following the disclosure of Edward Doe Adjaho’s summons to the MPs for a one week sitting beginning 1st September, there has been speculation that the Minority had requested the summons in order to initiate impeachment processes against President John Dramani Mahama.
Minority MPs threaten to impeach Mahama over bribery allegation
This was confirmed on The Big Issue by the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) MP for Ayawaso West Wuogon, Emmanuel Kyeremateng Agyarko.
“We have asked Mr. Speaker to call back the house… we would want to raise the issue of the gift from Kanazoe to his Excellency the President on the floor of Parliament,” he said on the show.
However, the Minority Leader told the host of Politicos on Citi TV, Umaru Sanda Amadu, that he had not received any formal communication about the reason for the summons.
“When I heard from the grapevine that Parliament was being summoned, I was taken a bit aback, especially when there had not been any prior consultations or discussions on the issue with my humble self. Be that as it may, I had to come down,” he said
“I came cruising down to Ghana to prepare myself and prepare my colleagues and position ourselves adequately for the discussions of the proposal on Thursday as being programmed. I still have no formal communication to me on that.”
The Minority in Parliament has already hinted of a possible impeachment process against President Mahama, for accepting the Ford Expedition gift from a Burkinabe Contractor, Djibril Kanazoe.
There were reports that the Minority had started collecting signatures of MPs in order to initiate impeachment proceedings against President Mahama.
Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu downplayed this, stating that the Minority was pushing for an appraisal of the Ford saga and had not, as yet, considered starting impeachment processes.
“At this stage, nobody is talking about impeachment. It’s a process that we want to start to investigate the conduct of the president and if there are any issues that are found to be untoward, we would interrogate same,” he said.
“As far as I’m concerned, the purpose for doing this is to broaden the horizon of our democratic governance. It’s not meant to humiliate anybody or to score political points.”
‘Parliamentary coup’
The Second Deputy Majority Chief Whip and MP for Banda, Ahmed Ibrahim, has suggested that the Minority leader’s lack of knowledge about the summons was an indication of a rift within the opposition MPs.
“Out of the 122 members on the minority side, only 18 members didn’t sign the motion. No single member from the majority side signed. I would be highly surprised if the Minority leader is saying he’s not privy to why the House is not being summoned. I would say that it’s a parliamentary coup d’etat.”
He suggested that the motion against the President might not have been backed by all members of the Minority and that certain persons were pushing for the action,” Ahmed Ibrahim told Umaru Sanda.
“The Minority side of Parliament is not intact and therefore some of us are suspecting that there may be some personalities there who may want to do what is happening. If a Minority leader, who is the leader of the side, is not privy to what his people have done, then it’s a constitutional coup on their side,” he added
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