Minority Leader and Tamale South Member of Parliament, Haruna Iddrisu, has described as embarrassing events that led to the passage of Mavis Hawa Koomson as a Minister.
The then Fisheries and Aquaculture Ministry nominee’s appearance before the Appointments Committee was deemed under par relative to the competence of the portfolio, hence a widely held view that the Minority should use their numbers to reject her approval when it came to a vote at the plenary.
That was not to be as the outcome of the vote showed that quite a number of Minority MPs voted in favour of Mrs. Koomson.
This was in early 2021 when President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo was constituting his new cabinet after winning the 2020 polls.
Months on, Haruna Iddrisu in an interview on Pan African TV explained why Hawa Koomson and other controversial nominees were approved by Parliament.
According to him, once such decisions are put to a secret ballot, the best he can do is to activate the party’s whip asking all members to tow a particular line, if they disobeyed, there was no way of knowing which of them had flouted the group position.
“If you put that to a vote and you saw the embarrassing outcome of Hawa Koomson, Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah,” he told the host of the Talk Time Show, Kwesi Pratt.
“Any elected MP is an adult, I Haruna Iddrisu cannot accompany an NDC MP into a ballot box to guide him on how to exercise his vote. He is responsible enough.
“Mine is to issue the party whip, which is the directive that we expect you to stand against this policy, nothing more. And as an adult, respecting the secrecy of the ballot, I cannot be held responsible,” he stressed.
He had in the same interview explained that to the extent that the Constitution said 51% of Ministers should come from Parliament, the best the Minority can do is to vet for competence and knowledge of portfolio and to do as much damage as possible to candidates who do not prove themselves fit.
