73 NDC MPs sign petition against reshuffle
Out of the 137 minority Members of Parliament, 73 of them have signed a petition asking the National Executive Committee of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to reverse the decision to reshuffle the Minority leadership.
The petition reads:
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"We the undersigned NDC Members of Parliament have taken note of a letter signed by our party General Secretary, Fifi Kwetey, dated 23rd January 2023, and addressed to the Speaker of Parliament.
"The letter purportedly makes changes to the leadership of our caucus. With all due respect, to the leadership of our party at all levels, we wish to request that they patiently broaden and deepen consultations on the subject again, because we have doubts about how thorough the process was."
"We are concerned that this critical decision didn't seem to have taken into consideration the unity of purpose and focus of our caucus.
"The caucus requires to deal with the Electoral Commission's intention to introduce a new C.I., the government's IMF negotiations and its intended reintroduction of the Agyapa deal before the House.
"We also think this decision may have unintended consequences as we go into our parliamentary primaries.
"Therefore, in the light of the party's National Executive Committee's decision at its last meeting to extend the mandate of all Directors to the end of May 2023, we respectively request that to be extended to all leadership of the party, including parliament.
"Until then, without disregarding the letter sent by the General Secretary of our party and without malice towards our colleagues opposed as new leaders, we undersigned NDC members of parliament resolve to stand by our current leadership until the process of consultation is satisfactory to all concerned."
Related: Muntaka: Decision to change Minority leadership is from few individuals
Already, the Member of Parliament for Asawasi in Kumasi, Mohammed Mubarak Muntaka says the minority leadership were not consulted before the announcement of their removal from office, neither was the entire parliamentary caucus also consulted.
At a press conference in Accra Thursday, Muntaka said it was a decision by some people in the party and the General Secretary went ahead and wrote a letter to that effect.
He argued that the right thing to do was to have consulted the entire minority caucus before any decision of that nature had been taken since the party cannot just sit somewhere and appoint leaders for MPs.
"I serve on NEC (National Executive Committee), I serve on FEC (Functional Executive Committee), I go to Council of Elders as an observer and I am also on the political committee as an observer. Congress, all of us as members of parliament are members of congress and the Minority Leader is also on all these levels."
"At no such meeting, was there any agenda to discuss this, so it is clear that it is a letter just written by the General Secretary, but the decision will just be the decision of some few people in the party and we believe that our party should sit up, because Article 55 of the 1992 Constitution is very clear, it says that everything that we do, we must follow democratic principles.
"We were never consulted. I mean, I heard some officers saying that some elders were sent to talk to us".
"I would be be very happy to be mentioning which elder was sent to me to talk to me, because no elder spoke to me," he said.
- Read also:
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- Changes in NDC parliamentary leadership: MPs, party faithful express varied opinions
Mr Muntaka said they were concerned that the decision taken was not from the party but a decision of some individuals, a few people in the party.
more to follow...
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