Approval of newly appointed ministers: I'm disappointed in minority leadership – Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu

Minority leader Cassiel Ato Forson (left), Majority leader Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu (right)

The Majority Leader and Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, has slammed the leadership of the minority caucus in Parliament over its stance on the approval of six new ministerial appointees.

According to him, the House was scheduled to vote on the approval of the six ministerial nominees of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, but the leaders of the minority caucus said they were going to speak to their members to see whether the approval could be done by consensus.

Speaking in a Neat FM interview on Friday, March 24, 2023, which GhanaWeb monitored, Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu said that the vote was delayed for hours only for the minority leaders to come and say that they were sticking to the position of their party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

"In the beginning, they (the minority leaders) said that we should vote on the approval of the ministers, then later they said the approval should be done by consensus. Yesterday, they came back to tell us that we should vote for the approval of the ministers.

"The position of their party is that they should not approve the ministers, but they said we should give them time for them to consult the party, only for them to return to tell us that they are taking their party's position.

"I was disappointed because they gave us the indication that they were going to change their minds. If they knew they were not going to change their stance, then we should have voted on the approval early," he said in Twi.

The approval of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo's six ministerial nominees hangs in the balance.

On Thursday, the consideration of a report by the Appointment Committee of Parliament on the nominees by the plenary was characterized by delays and heated exchanges.

The situation compelled the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, to defer a decision on the report to Friday, March 24, 2023.

The minority is determined to reject the nominees until the Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC) amends the contentious Constitutional Instrument (CI), and the president reduces the size of his government.

Watch the interview below:

You can also watch this episode of People & Places here:

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