Editorial

Help President Mahama form government in good time!

The Ghanaian Times commends President John Dramani Mahama for being able within days after his inauguration on January 7 to present his first three nominees to the Appointments Committee for vetting, which started on Monday.

As it is already in the public domain, the vetting on Monday involved Dr Cassiel Ato Baah Forson, the nominee designat­ed for Finance; John Abdulai Jinapor, nominated as Minis­ter-designate for Energy; and Dr Dominic Akuritinga Ayine, nom­inated as the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice-designate.

It is expected that in no time, the President would be able to present all the ministers he needs to have the full complement of his government to Parliament’s Appointments Committee for vetting before approving them to assume their assigned portfolios.

The role of the committee in governance is therefore so cru­cial that unexpected goings-on at its meetings or sessions cannot pass without comments.

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On Monday, the Minority Leader and member of the com­mittee, Alexander Afenyo-Mar­kin, called attention to intimi­dation from the majority side against the minority members and how that could undermine proceedings.

While we thought that could be taken by all the members in good faith, a member from the majority side, Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, passed a comment that when the now opposition New Patriotic Party assumed power (in 2017) and Mr Joseph Osei-Owusu was the chairman of the Appointments Committee, he could even stop some minority members on the committee from passing certain comments and that the current Chairman, Bernard Ahiafor had been benevolent enough to just call a member from the minority side to order.

The Ghanaian Times thinks that comment smacks of tacit push for equalisation, which can ginger Afenyo-Markin, for that matter, the minority side, to react in an unsavory way to the hurt of proceedings at the Appointments Committee. The Ghanaian Times wishes to remind the committee members that their duty is for the national good and not the interest of any political party.

Also, any chaotic occurrences at the committee’s sessions or sit­tings, besides showing disrespect to the President who has pre­sented the nominees for vetting, is a blot on the honour of those generating the strife first and consequently all the members.

Let’s be guided by an admo­nition in Proverbs 20:3 that “It is an honour for a man to cease from strife.”

The benefits of this admo­nition are progress and accom­plishments for the commit­tee, considering the fact that President Mahama needs to have his ministers approved in good time for him to hit the ground running.

Here is a man who is a come­back president and so has to reset himself for the better to erase the negative notions and prejudices his distractors already have and would want to use against him, including his delay in forming a government.

In spite of the misunderstand­ing that erupted at Monday’s vet­ting session, the good news was that Afenyo-Markin promised the cooperation of the minority side and pointed out that “the rule of the game is tolerance.”

The Ghanaian Times believes that the minority leader has said it all so the two virtues, coopera­tion and tolerance, should guide proceedings of the Appoint­ments Committee, with members having at the back of their minds that the country is in a season of resetting itself and all the people, particularly the leaders among them like the members of the Appointments Committee, must join the fray, otherwise the strife can spill over to the floor of Parliament, where the majority side is, at least, two-thirds of the 276-member house.

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