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Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, Majority Leader, and Frank Annoh-Dompreh, Majority Chief Whip, on the eve of the passage of the controversial Electronic Transfer Levy, E-Levy, planned the entry of ‘indisposed’ MP and Chieftaincy Minister, Ebenezer Kojo Kum, with the family, in order, to have his vote counted.
This was disclosed by Alhaji Mohammed-Mubarak Muntaka, MP, Asawase, in an interview with Joy News monitored by GhanaWeb.
According to him, while the Majority side was preparing and planning with their members on what they will be doing on that Tuesday, March 29, 2022, knowing that James Gyakye Quayson, Assin North MP, will be attending to a petition brought against him in court, they [Majority] knew that the Minority will not have the numbers, should they demand to vote on the bill.
Therefore, to outnumber them, they insisted on bringing their sick colleague, to help increase their number to 137 for Majority as against 136 for the Minority because Adwoa Safo, who is the 138th member is still in the United States of America.
Muntaka said, four of his members were outside the jurisdiction and he needed to get them back into the country on the eve of the passage of the bill because they don’t want the bill to come through with only a handful of Minority members.
This, he believes, will humiliate them and those who voted for them to represent them in the House.
“They [Majority] sent a message for a caucus meeting on Monday, March 28, and immediately, I intercepted it but that quickly told me that this caucus meeting will not be for nothing. At that time, I had a member in Sierra Leone, Freetown, I had another member in Amsterdam, two members in Istanbul, that was the Monday, and I had to fly them back to Accra before that Tuesday afternoon.
“The moment they went into the meeting, and by the time they finished the meeting, I have gotten the details [of the meeting] that they were going in for the E-Levy. So, [getting my members back] helps us to avoid humiliation. Aside from the four who were out of Ghana, we had two other members in Jomoro on Tuesday morning…they had to return on that same day. We refused to be humiliated,” the Minority Chief Whip narrated.
He stated that he prevented his members who were invited to join the President in commissioning the Tamale interchange.
“I made sure that nobody left for the commissioning because the commissioning was all part of their strategy…So, we came to the chamber we were 136 and they were 136 and you know the rules in the Constitution that when there is a tie [with voting] it is a loss; that was the calculation,” he said.
In explaining how the Majority side was planning in getting Kojo Kum who is indisposed into the chamber, Alhaji Mohammed-Mubarak Muntaka said on Monday evening:
“We had the Majority Leader, the Chief Whip come with the family of Kojo Kum to take them through where they will pass, how they will use the lift, how they will bring him to Speakers lobby and how they will get him into the Chamber and all that.
“So, I got that intelligence and I knew that if they succeed in bringing Kum, then they were going to be 137 and we will 136 so, I called for an early caucus meeting and we resolved that look even if we are 50, we have to stand to be counted. It is [better] we are counted and lose honourably; after Ghanaians know that we are vehemently against this thing…”
