The Minority Caucus in Parliament has described as disturbing what it said are attempts by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to tilt the balance of power in Parliament in order to approve the Electronic Transaction Levy (E-levy).
According to the side, having failed several times to pass the levy, the government has resorted to crude tactics to reduce the numbers of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) MPs in the House to help railroad the “unpopular” E-levy into law.
This, the Minority said, is a “sickening display of desperation by a sitting government to push an undesirable, punitive, insensitive double taxation and tax measure down the through of Ghanaians”.
Minority leader Haruna Iddrisu made the accusation when he addressed the media in Parliament following reports of criminal charges being brought against NDC MP for Assin North, James Gyakye Quayson to prevent him from holding himself as the lawfully-elected MP for Assin North.
He stated that this latest act of desperation comes at a time when an Appeal and an Application for a Stay of Execution filed against the Cape Coast High Court’s annulment of the 2020 Assin North Parliamentary Election is still pending at the Court of Appeal.
“As though the above desperate machinations were not enough, upon the instructions of President Akufo-Addo and the devious Attorney General and Minister for Injustice, Godfred Yeboah Dame, the Police Administration has called one of the Lawyers who represented the Hon. James Quayson in respect of the Assin North Parliamentary election petition, inviting him to make the Hon. Quayson available for service of a criminal charge on him for prosecution.
“Our information indicates that the said charge borders on an allegation that Hon. Quayson committed a crime by signing a declaration to the Electoral Commission to the effect that he was qualified to stand for election as an MP”, Mr Haruna Iddrisu stated.
According to the Minority leader, James Quayson was challenged at the time he submitted his declaration to the Electoral Commission (EC), which subsequently determined the matter in his favour after he had adduced sufficient evidence to satisfy the Commission that he was very much qualified to stand for election, whereupon he was cleared to contest the 2020 Assin North Parliamentary election.
“In the light of these facts, how can it properly contend that Hon. James Quayson criminally used a false declaration to deceive the Electoral Commission in order to stand for the said election,” he queried?
Haruna Iddrisu observed that the Attorney-General and the Police administration are acting in bad faith just to get an unfair advantage in Parliament for the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government in its unbridled quest to pass the obnoxious E-levy.
He cautioned that the will of Assin North constituents who voted for James Quayson to represent them in Parliament cannot be subverted by the government’s desperate manoeuvres and stressed the Minority membership is 137.
He assured Ghanaians not to be fazed or browbeaten by ‘these cowardly acts of intimidation by a government struggling on borrowed time.
The Minority Leader described the Akufo-Addo administration as “A government whose only interest is creating new opportunities to loot and share the meagre resources of Ghana even as Ghanaians groan under the yoke of hardships.
The Minority, he said, will continue “to resist the despotic Akufo-Addo/Bawumia regime and their use of crude Machiavellian tactics to reduce its numbers in Parliament in order to pass the obnoxious E-levy”.
Mr Haruna Iddrisu warned that any attempt by the Akufo-Addo government to tilt the balance of power in Parliament using the courts will be contrary to democratic norms, values and constitutionalism and urged the courts to rise to the occasion and preserve and protect Ghana’s democracy.
