General Mosquito jabs Majority Leader

General Secretary of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia has slammed the Majority leader of Parliament, Hon. Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu for expressing shock at the loud silence of the Minority in Parliament about the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) software scandal.

Reacting to the Majority leader in Parliament, the NDC Chief Scribe sarcastically asked who the majority leader was as in his estimation, Hon. Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu is still sounding as Minority leader without knowing his new responsibility.

“Who is the Majority leader?...Oh! I have forgotten that Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu has moved to the Majority side in Parliament because he talks as if he is still on the Minority side, and so remind him that he is the Majority leader. He should make his talks sound different from the rest of the House,” he told host of Okay FM’s 'Ade Akye Abia' on Thursday.

Responding to the SSNIT saga, General Mosquito as porpularly known, schooled the Majority leader to know his responsibility in Parliament as someone whose duty is to prompt his government to keep track of its policies and not to engage the Minority in an issue which his government is already working on it.

“He is not part of the policy making and so where the Cabinet fall short in implementing its policies, he steps in to guide them. If the policy is going on well, there is no need for the Minority to talk about it,” he stated.

He reiterated that government has already instigated an investigation into the SSNIT scandal and so it will be needless for the Minority side in Parliament to hold a press conference about it unless he [Majority leader] wants the Minority to hold a press conference asking the government to call off the investigation.

“...does he want us to organise a press conference to stop the government from investigating the SSNIT issue? What kind of press conference does he want us to hold? He wants us to call for press conference and ask the government to stop the investigation, which means that if they have wrongly accused the person, the NPP will come out to say they will continue and it will become a tug of war between the NPP and NDC,” he said.

He emphasized that the Minority would have talked about the SSNIT issue if the NPP government had dragged its feet on this scandal; thus, it is the responsibility of the Minority to keep the government on its toes.

“When the Deputy Minister of Agric made those ethnocentric comments, we expected the government to react to it and that was why we spoke about it and it was based on our pressure that the Deputy Minister resigned. You cannot compare this situation to the SSNIT scandal which government is already working on it. Why should we hold a press conference on this, to ask the government to stop or what?" he quizzed.