News:
February 22, 2023
A member of the Minority side on the Appointment Committee, Mahama Ayariga has served notice that his side would vote against approving Ministerial nominees made by President Nana Akufo-Addo.
According to him their side of the divide is not happy with the size of government more especially in this economic hardship when government has to deal with domestic debt exchange, with already eighty-five (85) Ministers. He said with three (3) of the ministers resigning, the government is still made up of eight-two (82), and they should be re-assigned.
Answering questions from journalists after the Minority Press conference, as to whether the Minority is calling for the scrapping of the Ministries for Trade and Industry, Food and Agriculture, the Bawku Central lawmaker noted that they are key Ministries that any government have. But all they are saying is Ministers of state already in government should have been re-assigned instead of nominating new Ministers.
Again, the President is not showing signs of wanting to make sacrifices and run a small size government; as such the Minority has made a promise to use their vote to back their promise of seeing a lean government.
As to whether this time around there would be any difference as the House in the current Parliament witnessed the Minority saying they would not approve certain Ministers but ended up approving them, he noted that as a Minority they agreed to pass some Ministers and reject others previously but those were not the views of some of his colleagues, but in the current case the one hundred and thirty-six (136) stands to get in this case.
He however failed to affirm if their action can prevent the nominees from becoming minister; but assured that they will vote to demonstrate that. “We would make every effort to stop government from expanding the size of government that is the issue today”.
And they would make efforts to compel President Nana Akufo-Addo to reduce the size of government since it’s an issue of principle and probably the President might have forgotten that the country is going through economic crises; their stand would force him to withdraw some of the nominees.
“Within the NDC Minority, we would not break ranks on this matter when it comes to the vote, we would see all of us working to getting to make this statement, we believe there are some people in the Majority who support our views”.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com