Recall of Parliament waste of resources —Nyaunu
A former member of parliament for the Lower Manya Krobo Constituency, Mr Michael Teye Nyaunu, aka MTN, has said the recall of Members of Parliament (MPs) for the emergency sitting was a waste of the country’s scarce resources.
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He said if MPs wanted to discuss the ‘Ford Expedition’ gift to the President for the sake of posterity, they could form a non-partisan committee to interrogate people who mattered on the issue.
Mr Nyaunu said if the MPs had confidence in the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) that is looking into the issue, then the recall was not necessary because other political parties had already petitioned CHRAJ and it had already started doing its constitutionally mandated duty.
Mr Nyaunu was speaking to the Daily Graphic in an interview at Odumase Krobo.
According to him, in this recent global recession period, coupled with high youth unemployment which had become a security threat, the utilisation of the country’s limited resources should be well prioritised.
“The recall of Members of Parliament would cost millions of Ghana cedis, which could well be channelled into taking care of the pressing needs of the country,” the former MP stressed.
Mr Nyaunu, who was one-time Deputy Speaker for the ECOWAS Parliament, said the amount of money that would go into the payment of allowances for the 275 MPs, apart from incidental costs, was so huge that he pleaded with the Speaker and his former colleagues of the House to exercise maximum discretion in the interest of the country.
He spoke to the Daily Graphic ahead of the parliamentary proceedings for the day and said the motion was going to be an exericise in futility as the Majority in Parliament could decide to arrest the motion so that it would not see the light of day.
He added that if the motion was to give political marks, which would mean throwing some mud at the President, that would also be an absolute failure.
He explained that the motion would fail because the handover of the gift to the President in 2012 was done in a very transparent manner. He said the gift was handed over to the Ghana Embassy in Burkina Faso and was recorded in all the necessary documents of the Embassy.