The presidential running mate of the Convention People’s Party (CPP) in Election 2012, Nana Akosua Frimpomaa II, has asked all eligible voters not to re-elect any sitting Member of Parliament (MP) back to the House until the MPs decline the huge ex gratia paid them at this crucial time.
“Do not cast your ballot for any MP until they do what is right,” she said.
Expressing displeasure at the quantum of payments made to former MPs when workers were agitating for salaries, Nana Frimponmaa asked, “How can an MP receive this whopping amount when teachers are on strike and doctors, pharmacists, Judicial Service workers and many others are also threatening to go on strike? Is it not a shame that people who have been voted to represent us and ensure our welfare are only thinking about themselves alone?”
“Let us all wake up from our slumber as Ghanaian voters and demand that the people we have sent to represent us in Parliament do not go there only to enact laws that suit them,” she said in a statement.
She asked how people who were working and receiving huge salaries at the end of every month and had access to everything they wanted could pay themselves huge ex gratia and attribute that to Constitution.
She wondered how the government could release the money to be paid to MPs who served in the Fifth Parliament of the Fourth Republic as ex gratia but the same government had refused to pay in full salary arrears of university teachers who were on strike.
“What kind of unfair and discriminatory circumstance do we find ourselves in?” she asked.
Again, according to Nana Frimponmaa, until MPs were able to address the concerns of this country, no one should vote for them to represent any constituency.
“I also want to throw a challenge to all the MPs that if they are really in Parliament for the interest of the people of Ghana, then they should offer their ex gratia as part of what they say is sacrificial to settle the labour unrest which is basically about salary arrears owed workers by the government and wait to be paid later.
“I want our MPs to work with “WISDOM” to ensure that all labour concerns have been addressed before they think of taking that huge money. MPs are supposed to enact laws to favour all of us.
They are to represent our interest and not theirs,” she said.