The Majority in Parliament has indicated that they will reject any move by the Minority to remove President John Dramani Mahama from office before December’s general elections.
The Speaker, Edward Doe Adjaho, dismissed a motion filed by the Minority on Thursday] to initiate a probe into the Ford gift saga by Parliament.
The Minority believed that the President acted inappropriately, given his position, by accepting the gift from the Burkinabe contractor.
The Ranking Member for Legal, Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs Joe Osei-Owusu said on Friday that the Minority was putting some evidence together against President Mahama as it tried to reach “a desired end.”
“When we get there, when we put the evidence together and the body that is responsible and has brought its conclusions out, that is when the desired end issue will arise,” he explained.
He added that the Minority is “totally capable of putting the evidence together and making a presentation that will persuade anybody that is listening to us. We will be willing to do the work, that there is evidence, that conduct of the president in this matter brought the office of the President into disrepute.”
However, according to the Majority leader, Alban Bagbin, any attempt to remove the president from office with “negative politics’ will not be successful.
“I never underestimate the intelligence of my colleagues in the opposition, I never do. But sometimes you are compelled to say that because you don’t underestimate their intelligence, you know that they know. So when somebody knows the right thing but proceeds to do the wrong thing, there must be a reason. In many cases you’ll see that it’s rather meant to play negative politics,” he said.
“Politics is a double-edged sword, and so it is for everything in the world; democracy is the same. If we decide to focus on the negatives of democracy, we’ll reap the consequences. My colleagues know that if they proceed along the way of impeachment, there’s no way they are likely to succeed. If with that knowledge, you still decide to embark on a wild goose chase, that’s your own issue.”
Minority motion ‘distracting’
Alban Bagbin echoed the comments made by the Speaker, that the Minority’s motion was redundant given the fact that petitions had already been submitted by three parties, including the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), and the youth wing of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), to the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice, (CHRAJ) to look into the matter.
He argued that the fact that the body mandated to handle such cases has already commenced investigations, it was unnecessary for the minority to call for independent parliamentary investigations into the issue.
“The good people don’t want politicization so they established a constitutional commission to handle such matters. That’s why we have CHRAJ because they know the nature of party politics and that is why they took those issues away from part of the functions or duties of parliament and decided that CHRAJ should take such issues,” he said.
“Those that are left on the plate of oversight is for Parliament to do. Those that have been identified and given to other institutions of state are for those institutions of state and not Parliament.”
He said the Minority’s actions were creating a distraction from the actual issues that were vital to the development of the country.
“It’s going to distract the attention of the whole country from focusing on laying down, not just the process to a successful election, but the culture of making sure that we start looking at issues. The media rather focused on shaping the thinking and minds of people on the process to impeach,” Alban Bagbin said.
“That is going to distract the country from focusing on the serious issues that are confronting us which we would have to discuss and find solutions to. There’s no government that will come and will not face those issues because there are global crisis, global security, unemployment and economic crisis. That’s what led to the Arab uprising and these are issues that as a country, we should have the political space to discuss. People want to see the solutions being offered by the various political parties before we get to the elections.”
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