Barton-Odro should have recused himself - Adwoa Safo

New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament for Dome Kwabenya, Adwoa Safo, has said Chairman of Parliament’s Appointments Committee, Ebo Barton-Odro should not have chaired the vetting of Attorney General-designate due to connection to the Woyome saga.

Though the former Deputy Attorney General has not been implicated in the scandal, he has been cited as having played a role in the Woyome saga.

Barton-Odro also disallowed questions relating to judgment debts when the nominee, Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong appeared before the Committee.

However, speaking on Citi FM’s News analysis program; The Big Issue, Adwoa Safo said Barton-Odro should have recused himself from that sitting.

“I would have advised he excused himself because once the vetting of the Attorney General came, it would follow by instinct that issues of Woyome and judgment debts will come up so if you find yourself in that position as a chairman of that vetting committee after its alleged you were either directly or indirectly involved in it, the decent thing you should have done was to excuse yourself. Maybe he had told himself that he wasn’t going to go into that area and that may be why he sat and prevented questions from flowing from that angle,” she stated.

Adwoa Safo also said the question on judgment debt offered an opportunity for the nominee to have assured Ghanaians that the issue of judgment debts is going to be a thing of the past.

“We should be fair to ourselves and as parliamentarians. We owe a duty to our people that when there is a change of government, things should go on normally as if nothing has happened,” she said.

Madam Safo further stated, “We ought to make things that were wrong in the past, right and that would have been the perfect opportunity for Ghanaians to hear the pragmatic steps President Mahama and the Attorney General were going to take when it comes to judgment debt.”

“It would have been an opportunity to reassure Ghanaians that if something happened in the past, it’s not going to happen again but if you shed it off like that, it raises more stigma, questions and make them doubtful as to whether we have that political will to fight as a government,” she added.