The General Secretary of the National
Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr Johnson Asiedu Nketia, has expressed
disappointment at the careful attempt made by the New Patriotic Party
(NPP), in avoiding to address issues at the heart of the matter in the
sale of Merchant Bank to Fortiz and rather concentrated on issues at
the periphery at its press conference last Thursday.
Reason
He explained that the main reason why the leadership of the NDC got
interested in this debate was whether there had been any conflict of
interest on the part of President Mahama, President Mills or any other
NDC government official in the granting, disbursement or recovery effort
of Merchant Bank of any loan to Engineers and Planners or any of the
other leading loan defaulters.
‘’However, when Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, the Minority leader, addressed
the press conference held by the Minority NPP Caucus in Parliament on
Thursday January 9, 2014, and after reading the full statement, I became
very disappointed because of the careful attempt made by the NPP to
avoid any of the issues I raised which go to the heart of the matter and
rather concentrated on issues at the periphery,’’ Mr Nketia declared.
These were contained in a statement issued by the General Secretary of the NDC in reaction to the Minority’s press conference.
Surprise
According to the statement, the leadership of the NDC was not
surprised because that had always been the strategy of the NPP. “When
you cannot stand the logic of the argument, attack the personalities
involved; if the subject of the debate is not convenient to our
interest, let us divert the attention of the nation to something else.”
The statement said the NPP failed to take up the challenge thrown at
them when “I invited anyone of them who had any credible information to
contradict the positions that had been canvassed about the sale of the
Merchant Bank during my interview on ASEMPA FM’S “EKOSII SEN” programmme
on Wednesday, January 8, to make same public so that we could engage in
a constructive debate over the issues at stake.”
The statement noted that the whole purpose of the Minority NPP’s
press conference last Thursday, was to deliberately attack the Speaker
of Parliament, Rt. Hon. Doe Adjaho, so that the focus of the debate
would shift to whether or not the perpetrators should be hauled to the
Privileges Committee of Parliament.
‘’Let them be told that I am not going to fall for that bait. I will
leave honourable members of the august house to deal with the issues of
discipline in their own time,’’ the statement stressed.
According to the statement, “since we cannot be dealing with the
symptoms of the disease without bothering about the cause, the first
question that comes up is, how did Merchant Bank get to its current
predicament?’’
The statement asked whether it was in the best interest of the
workers of Ghana and the nation at large for SSNIT not to do anything
about the bank so that the bank would collapse.
The statement further asked the Minority to provide constructive
criticism if there was a better way of dealing with the bank than that
which was contained in the Fortiz deal and whether there were
representatives of workers (contributors of SSNIT) involved in all the
board decisions of SSNIT on the Merchant Bank issue.
The statement concluded that the good people of Ghana eagerly awaited
for answers to those questions so as to put the Merchant Bank issue at
rest.
Source:
Daily Graphic
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