House yet to act on report on ex-Speaker. Says Chairman

FRontpage, May 15, 2009
Story: Emmanuel Adu-Gyamerah
THE Minority Leader in Parliament, Mr Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, has stated that the Parliamentary Service Board (PSB) which constituted the ad hoc committee to look into the items allegedly taken away from the official residence of the former Speaker is yet to take a decision on the findings of the committee.
He said it was, accordingly, unfair for anybody to rush to the press to crucify the former Speaker over the recommendations of the committee.
Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, who was the Chairman of the ad hoc committee, expressed these sentiments in an interview with the Daily Graphic yesterday.
Reacting to a front-page story of the Thursday, May 14, 2009 edition of the Daily Graphic, the Minority Leader said the leaking of information from the ad hoc committee which investigated the truth or otherwise of the allegation was, therefore, unfortunate and a disservice to Parliament as an institution.
He also described the GH¢4.5 million quoted in the story as the value of the items allegedly taken away by Mr Ebenezer Begyina Sekyi Hughes from his official residence after his retirement as “outrageous and a palpable falsehood”.
Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu quoted the correct value of the items to be about GH¢430,000 (¢4.3 billion) and not the GH¢4.5 million (¢45 billion) quoted by the paper and regretted that “because those who leaked the information to the Daily Graphic were in a hurry to cause mischief, they quoted such an outrageous amount”.
The Minority Leader explained that there seemed to be a policy in place from which some senior officers who retired from the Parliamentary Service had enjoyed by taking away some items in their residence and wondered why the former Speaker had to be singled out for mention to disgrace him.
He, therefore, called on the media, the public and those behind the leaking of information from Parliament to exercise restraint and allow the PSB to come up with a definite decision on the matter.
“Until that is done, it will be improper for us to condemn the former Speaker,” he said.
He said the sanctity of Parliament as an arm of government should always be upheld and that if anything untoward happened in the House, the matter should be dealt with within, instead of some people always hurrying to the press with issues which were before the PSB.
“What is happening is most unfair. Before the PSB meets, the items on the table are already in the media,” he said, and questioned whether such an attitude was being displayed within the Executive and the Judiciary.
“Whoever is behind such leaks is not helping the cause of parliamentary democracy,” he said.
Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu also described what he termed as occasional resort to statements to embarrass the former Speaker as “diversionary tactics by the government”.
He explained that after each of the three occasions when the Minority had held press conferences to respond to some actions by the government, they had been followed by publications on the former Speaker to divert the attention of the public from the issues that the Minority had raised.
He stated that while not condoning any misdeed, any such diversionary tactics would not help the country’s democratic dispensation.