Development Economist, Dr. Michael Adongo is in strong support of the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta losing his job. He has however cautioned against using Ken Ofori Atta as a scapegoat.
When Dr. Adongo spoke on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show, he opined that the basis for the sacking of the Minister should not be on situations that have been allowed to slide under previous ministers in his position.
“One thing that stood out for me was the attempt to pin the use of resources on the Finance Minister without recourse to Parliament. Yes, it is a brazen disregard for Parliamentary proceedings but on this one, I would like to tread on a path of caution because it is a practice that previous Finance Ministers have been doing and I do not want us to use this one as an excuse to take the Minister away.”
“Much as we all agree that the Minister is bad news for Ghana and we want him to go, I do not want us to resort to scapegoatism and referring to issues that we have allowed to pass in the most recent past to take down the Finance Minister,” he said.
For the issues that have been made to pass under previous ministers, Dr. Adongo suggested reprimands for the minister rather than use same as a justification for his sack.
“People have breached the Public Financial Management Act, the Auditor General proves it and they only go away with reprimand. Why should we be using that as a basis to take away the Finance Minister? There is no denying the fact that the Finance Minister ought to be sacked. I think he ought to be sacked on the back of the fact that he is no longer capable of leading this country and managing its resources.”
“He is someone that people think that even if we were to put resources in his hands, he is going to lead us right back to where we are now,” he said.
Meanwhile, the former Member of Parliament for the Tamale Central Constituency, Inusah Fuseini has critiqued the ad hoc committee set up by the Speaker of Parliament to hear the Minister of Finance on the censure motion against him.
The Minority has moved a motion in Parliament to censure the Finance Minister on some 7 grounds that they believe have brought the country’s economy to crisis.
The Speaker of Parliament therefore set up an eight-member ad hoc Committee to probe allegations leveled against the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta.
Contributing to the topic on Day Break Upper East Show, the former MP who doubles as lawyer said formation of the Committee is not a known parliamentary procedure.
He said, “the Committee itself revealed what I will call the difficulty and changes of having to set up an ad hoc committee with two chairmen and an equal number of members. It’s not a known parliamentary procedure. In parliamentary procedure, you will have to have one chairman and a ranking or a deputy chairman so you will know who is a leader in this Committee. So it is very important that in establishing these things we take the nuances of parliamentary practice into consideration. If not, we are always going to run into difficulties like that but all in all, I think we are learning useful lessons and probably when given another opportunity, might do differently.”
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
