The Member of Parliament for Wa Central, Dr. Rashid Pelpuo, has chastised the Minority over its failed attempt to get Parliament to investigate President John Mahama for his acceptance of the Ford Expedition gift from a Burkinabe contractor.
“It was good the Speaker threw it out because we don’t have time for that because CHRAJ is the constitutional body mandated by the to do exactly that and they are doing it,” he said.
Pelpuo, who doubles as a Minister of State in charge of the Private Sector, argued that the timing was wrong since the issue had been dealt with when it first came up in the Auditor General’s report in 2013.
“The story as we know came out in the Auditor General’s report in 2013, dealt by the Public Accounts Committee, and was brought to the House. We debated it and nobody raised an issue about investigating the presidency. Manesseh’s story came out and we went back to Parliament on and off, nobody thought about raising an issue or calling for investigations.”
They failed in all these instances, three years after the report, only to wait, three months to the election, when we are on recess working to win our seats, you have brought the matter back, and didn’t even do background checks,” he lamented on The Big Issue on Saturday. He thus commended the Speaker for the decision he took.
Speaker throws out motion
The Speaker of Parliament, Edward Doe Adjaho on Friday threw out the motion filed by the minority to demanding the setting up of a special by-partisan parliamentary committee to probe the issue.
Adjaho explained that the right body to investigate the matter was the Commission on Human Right and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), which he said was already doing same. But the minority in Parliament insisted the Speaker was wrong, and have vowed to gather more evidence to pursue the President on the matter.
NPP doing disservice to Ghana He again argued that, the minority were doing Ghanaians a disservice by filing the motion. “There’s so much sloppiness about what happened. The speaker has done so well.
Just imagine us taking this matter up close to the elections with people spewing out lies, unsubstantiated accusations, throwing them all at the presidency, close to the election. This is timed to create confusion so that nobody can resolve it before the election. I must add that they did a lot of disservice to the people of Ghana,” he added.
Agyarko fights back
Meanwhile, the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) MP for Ayawaso West Wogon, Emmanuel Kyeremateng Agyarko, who was also on the programme insisted that they did the right thing. He also explained that the issue was “a golden” opportunity for President John Mahama to prove his innocence in the matter.
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