Ningo Prampram Member of Parliament, Samuel Nartey George, has said the Chief Justice, who was in the legislative house at the time of the election of a Speaker for the 8th Parliament, bolted from the Chamber into his car when the military entered the House during the chaos on the floor on January 7.
Mr George, who condemned the military intervention, explained on ‘The Key Points’ programme on TV3 that as of the time the chaos was ongoing, there was no President and Vice President in the country because their tenure had expired.
He also said there was no Speaker to step in, and so the only person who could act, per the constitution as the leader of the country at that particular time until a Speaker was elected to also swear in the president-elect, was the Chief Justice.
“If any misfortune had happened to the Chief Justice at that short period, that could have amounted to an attack on the State,” he explained.
Therefore, he said, with a history of how soldiers have in the past, taken undue advantage of some little opportunity they chanced upon to organise coups, the Chief Justice decided to leave.
“…The Chief justice ran away from Parliament when the soldiers came because nobody knew what the soldiers were going to do.”
Military men stormed the Chamber following stalemate between MPs-elect for the National Democratic Congress and New Patriotic Party (NPP) sides while they were electing a new Speaker of the House.
Some Ghanaians, including former President John Dramani Mahama, condemned the intervention of the military and called for thorough investigations into the matter.
Mr George further accused Defence Minister, who is also the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament for Bimbila, Dominic Nitiwul, of being the brain behind the military invasion of parliament when chaos occurred during the election of a new speaker for the 8th parliament on January 7. The former Minister has denied it.
Mr George said on the same show that Mr Nitiwul, who he described as a former Defence Minister, kept telling the NDC’s side of the House that if they did not behave well, he was going to order the Military to come in.
But, he said, they replied him saying, “he did not have the power to do so.”
He told host of the programme that, “while we were in the House the former Minister of Defence Dominic Nitiwul kept on telling us that if we did not behave ourselves he was going to bring in the military and we kept telling him he had no power to do so.”
Meanwhile, Former Member of Parliament for Tempane and former Deputy Attorney General, Joseph Dindiok Kpemka, said the military men who intervened when chaos occurred during the election of a Speaker for the 8th Parliament were professional in their conduct.
He said they did not attack or assault anybody when they intervened, rather, he said they helped to calm the tension in the House.
“A certain situation invited the military into the system. When they got into the chamber what was their conduct? Did they attack MPs? Did they beat MPs? No,” he said.
“You may condemned their entry but their conduct was professional,” he said.