Johnson Asiedu Nketia
General Secretary of the opposition NDC, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, has accused the Clerk of Parliament, Cyril Kwabena Nsiah for deliberately marking about eight NDC Members of Parliament as absent, during the approval of the controversial Electronic Transactions Levy (E-levy) Bill.
According to the NDC Secretary who is a member of the Parliamentary Service Board, the Clerk of Parliament is in bed with the Majority members, hence tampering with vital evidence to be used by the Minority in challenging the passage of the E-levy in court.
Parliament on Tuesday, March 29, 2022, approved the controversial E-Levy Bill after the Consideration Stage was completed by a Majority-sided House.
The Bill was adopted at a reduced rate of 1.5% from the initial 1.75% amid a Minority walkout.
Asiedu Nketia reacting to the absent of the NDC MPs in the chamber when the E-Levy was presented to the house on Joy News said the Clerk who keeps possession of the true records of the House, deliberately marked about eight NDC MPs as absent.
He explained that “How come these people [the eight MP’s] will all of a sudden be marked absent when they actually were there and everybody saw them? They signed the attendance sheet and I have spoken to them. They signed the attendance sheet so it tells you that somebody somewhere is tampering with evidence”.
To him, the Office of the Clerk has been compromised by the Majority, hence calling on the leadership of the Minority to challenge the altered documents.
He cried out that “It gives me the impression that the Majority side knew they have done something wrong and the approval of E-levy was not actually backed by the rules, and they know the Minority have resorted to court action and so they now come round to fake the evidence that will be called for during the hearing, and that is what gives me the suspicion that this thing is a deliberate orchestration to take decisions on behalf of Ghanaians when their representatives have actually not taken those decisions legitimately”.
He also backed the decision of the NDC MPs to stage a walkout during the consideration of the e-levy, adding that the government should rather be blamed for imposing the e-levy on the citizenry and not the Minority.
“Walking out or voting against them, all the same. So I don’t see how Ghanaians could feel let down by the NDC, because we can only fight with the weapon that Ghanaians have provided us and we were provided with 137 weapons so if you expect us to fire 200 and 300 weapons that will be too much because our vote maximally should come out up to 137,” he noted.
Meanwhile, MinorityLeader, Haruna Iddrisu, and his colleagues, Mahama Ayariga and Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa have dragged the Attorney-General to the Supreme Court over the approval of the E-Levy.
They contend that Parliament did not have the required number of at least, half of its members present when the controversial tax policy was approved.
– BY Daniel Bampoe