The Appointments Committee of the Seventh Parliament of the Fourth Republic screening ministerial nominees of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has raised the bar with regards to the standard of vetting, Yaw Oppong, a private legal practitioner and lecturer at the Central University College, has said.
According to him, the quality of questions posed to the first four nominees who appeared before the committee on the first day of vetting were apt and probing enough, bringing to the fore the depth of knowledge of the appointees.
The committee started the vetting exercise on Friday January 20. So far, Senior Minister-designate Yaw Osafo Marfo, Finance Minister-designate Ken Ofori-Atta, Defence Minister-designate Dominic Nitiwul and National Security Minister-designate Albert Kan-Dapaah have been vetted.
Speaking in relation to this exercise on TV3’s New Day on Saturday January 21, Mr Oppong said: “First of all we must commend parliament, especially members of the committee. To sit down and ask questions and probe from morning to evening, I think they must be really commended.
“I think they raised the bar yesterday. The few vetting I have witnessed, I think this particular one – that is, both the majority and minority sides to a large extent – showed that they were really not up to applying their political biases but they asked relevant questions.
“I think those who were invited, most of them should be grateful to this opportunity that was given to them by parliament.
“For example in the case of Osafo Marfo, regarding the clarification of the CNTCI loan agreement, this issue had come up over and over again and people have used it in a way to cast a slur on his reputation. For the first time I heard what appeared to me to be a more satisfactory answer than the previous explanation.
“And also the issue of Macmillan, that was the first time I heard an explanation on that and I think, to a large extent, it cleared the air.”
Source: Ghana/AccraFM.com
