Pratt slams Minority Leader for violating secret ballot rules

Kwesi Pratt Jnr, Managing Editor of the Insight newspaper has taken a swipe at the Minority Leader Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu in relation to the failed Constitutional Amendment Bill, 2016 accusing him of bastardizing the process to secret balloting in the August House.

“There is a good reason that the vote on it should be secret;” he noted, adding that it is problematic for the Leader to fly his vote in the House when indeed he needn’t have done that against the standards and Orders of the house.

“Why did the minority Leader find it necessary to display his NO VOTE? What did he intend to achieve by showing his NO Vote? For me the impression I get was to galvanized all the members of parliament of his side to toe the line. And I find that there is a problem with that and it goes against the rules.” Pratt said on Radio Gold’s Alhaji and Alhaji programme Saturday.

Commenting on the process undertaken Thursday by the House, Pratt said he was appalled by the way the Whip system was being abused in Ghana’s legislature to the detriment of healthy discourse in the interest of the nation.

Pratt said he gets worried with the impression that the two divide voted for a bloc position on the matter and that there were no dissenting views from both sides, insisting this trend calls for a crucial review of the Whip system to salvage democracy in Ghana.

“I’m now fully convinced that the voting was on partisan basis. Is anybody telling me that all the 95 MPs from the minority side, none of them had any problem with the position taken by their leadership on such a crucial issue, is that possible? Is it possible that all the 125 MPs from the majority side had no problem with position taken by their leaders? When political leaders begin to behave in robotic fashion, it does raise many issues about principle, and appreciation of the truth and so on, and I’m worried that we are getting to this level,” Pratt said.

On Thursday, the proposed change of the election date from December 7 to the first Monday of November in an election year was shot down by parliament when the Constitutional Amendment Bill was rejected although the EC had indicated its preparedness to organise the polls in November.

The ruling NDC has since blamed the minority of rejecting the Bill for political expediency.