Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has said the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Caucus will not take pleasure in obstructing matters in the House.
His comments follow concerns raised on the 8th Parliament’s equal outcome of a 13-13 composition of the Appointments Committee members from both the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and National Democratic Congress (NDC).
Chief Whip for the NPP, Alexander Afenyo-Markin had raised concerns on the distribution, arguing that the First Deputy Speaker must be excluded when counting the number of members in the Committee since he has no voting right.
Speaking on PM: Express, Mr Ablakwa said the NDC is conscious of the fact that Ghanaians are watching and would not do anything to disrupt processes in that regard.
“We do not have to be obstructionist, we do not have to be spoilers or saboteurs. Our mindset is to be constructive, is to pursue the supreme national interest,” he said Wednesday.
The North Tongu MP wants Ghanaians to refute the thought of a possible disaster in the House.
“This is a positive development and I get the sense sometimes that people are scared, people are worried, people even think that Armageddon is upon us, I disagree,” he said.
According to him, the NDC will not attempt to unnecessarily delay the development of the country as it may cost the party dearly going forward.
“There is a way that can backfire and then your party will suffer at the poll so we are rational, we are reasonable people, we have constituents,” the MP told host Evans Mensah.
He stressed that if a party abuses power reposed in them, “when you get back to your constituency, you will pay dearly for it.”
He, therefore, encouraged Ghanaians not to be “needlessly worried, we should rather encourage this and see how we support the current configuration to work.”
The 8th Parliament approved nominated members for the Business and Appointments Committees Wednesday, to decide on the agenda for the House every week at a sitting.
The move, which is in line with Article 103 of the 1992 Constitution and Order 151 of the Standing Orders of the House, also enables the Appointments Committee to vet ministerial nominees by President Nana Akufo-Addo.
Mr Ablakwa therefore stated that the outcome on the committee is “fair, it represents the outcome of the mandate that the Ghanaian people have given us.”
He said: “The constitution and our standing orders also provide that the committee membership must reflect the nature of the house so we’ve always used a formula on the strength on the national election.
“And when you do the formula, the ratio of 138:137, you get 50.1 and 50.4987 per cent so we rounded it up to a 50-50 ratio and that gives us a 13 per team membership.”