Political scientist and Centre for Democratic Development-Ghana (CDD-Ghana) fellow, Dr John Osae Kwapong, has said he is not surprised about the outcome of the Censure Motion against Finance minister, Ken Ofori-Atta.
According to him, the actions of the Majority Caucus prior to the day of voting showed the censure procedure would fail.
“Subsequently if you look at the turn of events after their meeting with the president and they holding back until certain two conditions had been met and then looking at how the process began playing out, that is when I said, well I’m not sure they would lend support in terms of vote to the NDC caucus.
“So I looked at it and said the outcome for me was always predictable, which was there will be no support from the NPP MPs and therefore ultimately the censure motion would fail,” he stated.
Speaking on Joy News’ AM Show, the CDD fellow said he appreciates that the censure process was a different approach to holding ministers accountable.
“But one thing that I at least appreciated about the whole process was that I’ve been asking myself, what happens after Parliament gives their approval of a nominated minister? It seems like there is no post-approval recourse, in terms of accountability when it comes to ministers of state after parliament has given them a nod,” he added.
“It’s up to the appointing authority to decide what to do in the event of any outrageous misconduct on the part of a minister. But it looks like a censure is an in-built political process that allows parliament to still have a say after they’ve given approval to a minister of state.
“And at least you saw that triggered, you saw that in action but again ultimately I’m not surprised at the outcome,” he added.
Dr Kwapong noted that unless both caucuses agree to censure a minister for a serious criminal offence, the process will always fail.
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“It would have to take, I would say a bipartisan vote to censure a minister. After I watched the proceedings, it suggests to me that it would have to be something seriously egregious, something very criminal in conduct, for example, is maybe the threshold that situation has to rise to get both NDC and NPP MPs to say we would want to censure a minister of state but say for that, the process taught me that this is how it will usually turn out.”
On Thursday, November 8, 2022, the Minority caucus in parliament lost the censure motion to dismiss the Finance Minister after the majority walked out before the voting.
In accordance with article 83, not less than two-thirds of parliament were to cast votes of censure to fire the finance minister.
However, the caucus had 136 MPs present and though they had a 100% vote, the process failed because the number did not meet the requirement.