Ministerial Vetting: Minority questions lack substance –Tarzan

The former boss of the Volta River Authority (VRA), Dr. Charles Wereko-Brobby has chastised the conduct of the minority members of the Appointments Committee of Parliament describing their conduct as unacceptable.

Parliament on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, constituted the 26-member Committee also known as the ‘vetting committee’ to vet the nominees for various ministerial portfolios announced by President Akufo-Addo.

It is chaired by Joseph Osei-Owusu, Member of Parliament (MP) for Bekwai and first Deputy Speaker of Parliament and Haruna Iddrisu, Minority Leader and MP for Tamale South as the First ranking member.

Commenting on the conduct of the members of the committee drawn from the minority side of parliament on Starr Chat Wednesday, February 22, 2017, the engineer cum politician sternly derided the minority leader and his colleagues for appearing to be an epitome of knowledge.

He said: “I felt quite frankly [that] some of the questions…the questions from the minority were either trying to sort of browbeat nominees into agreeing with certain positions that they didn’t like or trying to correct them or what I found even more difficult was the fact that having left government—many of things they were asking the nominees to promise or deliver were things that they themselves hadn’t delivered and people of Ghana had said get out.”

“So really it was not unto them to start trying to play God, or Jesus Christ or Allah whoever it was to try and pontificate about what we should be doing,” he added, urging them to have the “humility” to allow those who have been brought in the space to do the work required of them.

He said there was too much pomposity in the way the vetting process had been going.

Dr. Wereko-Brobby said the questioning at the vetting Committee should be limited to whether the nominee is fit for purpose in terms qualification as per the constitution but the process so far has been disappointing and that it has been reduced to partisanship.