General News of Friday, 21 July 2017
Source: Graphic.com.gh
2017-07-21
Hassan Ayariga
The leader and founder of the All Peoples Congress (APC), Mr Hassan Ayariga has waded into the discussions on the petition asking for the removal of the chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Mrs Charlotte Osei and questioned why the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has jumped to the defence of Mrs Osei.
“My concern is I don’t understand why the NDC is defending the EC boss and asking the president not to do witch-hunting,” Mr Ayariga said in a radio interview with Accra based Class FM Friday afternoon.
“I have read the letter or the petition that some group of EC workers sent to the President. I read many of the allegations and I assume that if all these allegations are true, then its very serious because we are told that the EC Chair used Ghc4million to renovate her residence. I think it is on the higher side, without even the approval of the commission, I think it is abuse of power. And then they made mention of she using $4million to award a contract to a company that is associated with her, that is also abuse of power, if it is true.”
“But my concern here is that, I don’t understand why the NDC as a party, and a group of members of the NDC are defending the EC boss and asking the President not to do witch-hunting. When you say witch-hunting, witch-hunting means that the person that is witch-hunted is a member of your party. Because if you say that the government is witch-hunting the EC boss, does it mean that the EC boss is a member of the NDC, that’s my problem,” Mr Ayariga questioned.
Adding, the comic politician said: “Let me put it clear, it is not members of the NPP that petitioned the President. It was not members of the APC that petitioned the President, but it was members of the commission. They say that she is abusing her powers as a member, she is not doing things right, she is not involving them in meetings and many other issues and she is arrogant.”
Asked about why the petition should be taken serious when the petitioners are not even known as of now, Mr Ayariga said, “we don’t need to know who the petitioners are for now. What is important is the petition was signed by somebody on behalf of those people, that is enough. Because the person cannot sign on behalf of himself without giving an authority to do that. But here is the case, he is a lawyer and he has been given the mandate to write the petition on their behalf to be sent to the president.”
“My point here is that we should allow the law to work. It’s been noted that the president has received the petition, so let the president act as the President of the Republic of Ghana not because anything that does not favour the NDC, then it is witch-hunting,” he said.
Mr Ayariga described the actions of those calling on the president to ignore the petition as being hypocritical. “I will call it hypocritical for some institutions like the Peace Council to call on the President to be careful with how he impeach the EC boss.”
“When APC in 2016, the presidential candidate was disqualified without proper reasoning, I did not hear Peace Council coming out to say that the EC should thread cautiously or the EC should be careful because we are practicing multi party democracy and for that matter, we want multi party participation,” he said.
