Ablakwa under pressure to resign as MP

Pressure is mounting on the Member of Parliament (MP) for North Tongu, Mr. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa to resign as MP after his resignation from the Parliament’s Appointments Committee.

This comes after the North Tongu legislator resigned from the Appointments Committee on Wednesday, March 31, 2021, as the leadership of the Minority faced criticism following the passing of Ken Ofori-Atta as Ghana’s Finance Minister tapered off by supporters of the National Democratic Congress.

Mr. Ablakwa attributed his resignation to personal reasons and principles.

This the First Deputy Majority Chief Whip, Habib Iddrisu has described as a betrayal to the agenda of the Minority caucus in Parliament and further called for his resignation as MP for the North Tongu constituents.

Speaking in an interview on Joy FM, the Tolon legislature said Ablakwa’s resignation as MP would bring finality to the assertion of principles he raised in his resignation.

“If you look at the narrative, the fact that honourable Okudzeto Ablakwa came out to the public to resign from the Appointment Committee, you see even though he has not clearly stated the reason but if it is linked to the consensus approval of the Minister for Finance honourable Ken Ofori-Atta, I am saying that if that is the reason then he should just resign as a Member of Parliament.

“It is on record for the General Secretary of the party that the NDC came out to have said that it was their party decision that the Minister for Finance should be allowed to go. The second reason is that Ablakwa is a member of the Appointments Committee, he had his turn to have asked the Finance Minister any question that is of doubt to him and even after asking, he had the right to have voted against his approval but the Committee report stated consensus – meaning everyone agreed on his approval including Ablakwa himself so his resignation is a betrayal.”

He added, “Parliament is a house of records, if he had stated during the Committee report that he opposed Ken Ofori-Atta’s approval, it would have been indicated, the report never mentioned anything of such. The principle that derived his previous resignation should do same here. My argument is a moral one I’m making not based on legal.”

Lawyer Gabby Otchere Darko, a lead member of the New Patriotic Party and co-founder of the Danquah Institute, a political and economic think-tank, has also questioned the logic behind Mr. Ablakwa’s resignation especially when the resigned MP has a great opportinuty to probe Mr. Ofori-Atta when the latter faced the Appointment’s Committee.

According to Otchere Darko,: “When he had his chance to ask questions, Mr. Ablakwa came out with what he thought was a killer question. Databank’s MFund grew from a value of GHS269 million in 2016 to GHS805 million in 2020. The MP for North Tongu highlighted this and stressed in his question to the Finance Minister-designate that this astronomical growth in the assets of MFund took place when the founder of Databank became Finance Minister from 2017 to 2020. The way he carefully phrased and delivered the question was deadly and it appeared to have badly exposed Mr. Ofori-Atta. But, did it?

“The question was designed to buttress the wrong perception craftily pushed by the NDC over the years that Ken uses his ministerial position to promote the interest of his private business. Mr. Ablakwa’s question was tailored to show evidence why the retired investment banker’s ministerial nomination should not be approved.

“But, Mr Ablakwa, whether he did it deliberately or out of limited knowledge of the contextual facts, got it fundamentally wrong. He goofed. It was as if he was fed the statistics and could not be bothered to cross-check their contextual veracity and simply expected Ken to fall on Ablakwa’s plastic sword. A similar story ran through the entire vetting”, Gabby added.