*In meeting with MPs

*K. T. Hammond dis Bagbin for public denial of Chinery Hesse report

PRESIDENT JOHN EVANS Atta Mills has pleaded with MPs to ease the pressure on his government by giving him time and room to handle issues concerning the Chinery Hesse recommended ex-gratia approved by immediate past President John Agyekum Kufuor and the just-dissolved 4th Parliament of the 4th Republic.

Sources at a meeting between President Mills and the leadership of Parliament held last week said the President was confronted with evidence that the much maligned Chinery Hesse Committee’s report recommendation was indeed brought to Parliament, properly laid and approved contrary to impressions generated by the Executive and some parliamentarians that this wasn’t so.

Sources say contrary to earlier media reports and a reported BNI probe which concluded without a detailed investigation that the letter purporting to inform Parliament of the President’s approval may have been faked or back-dated, President Mills was told in clear terms by the bi-partisan leadership of Parliament that the Chinery Hesse recommendations had been properly approved and sealed by both former president Kufuor and Parliament.

It is a binding legal document and sacrosanct as the Constitution stipulates, we told him, a source, who was at the meeting said.

The meeting, GYE NYAME CONCORD, gathered included leadership of both minority and majority sides of the House.

Some of those present at the meeting were Majority Leader Alban Sumani Kingsford Bagbin, Majority Chief Whip John Tia as well as Minority Leader Kyei Mensah Bonsu.and some of his lieutenants.

Sources say President Mills upon deliberations appealed to Parliament to take charge of investigations into the legitimacy of the approval processes to arrive at the truth he had been told after some MPs suggested that copies of the letter at the presidency may have been deliberately hidden from him to push him to attempt an unconstitutional act.

He reportedly asked the MPs, however, to ensure that they delay the investigative process so as to give him time to ease off the pressure on managing the economy as well as the anger of opponents of the ex-gratia payments.

Sources say there was agreement that the full implementation of the ex-gratia recommendations on MPs amounting to almost $15 million would go into effect next month, March.

Gye Nyame Concord gathered that Honourable K. T. Hammond, who has not hidden his disdain for the delayed process and is remembered for pushing Central Regional Minister Ama Benyiwa Doe to admit having received her Chinery Hesse-recommended ex-gratia during her vetting process, took his anger on Majority Leader Alban Bagbin, whom he blamed for being a cause of the misleading information to the President with an earlier statement that he was not in Parliament when the issue came up and was therefore unaware of the report.

Sources say he was so wild he had to be restrained from pouring out his anger on his fellow colleague at a later caucus meeting where they were briefed on the meeting at the presidency.

Meantime ongoing checks by this paper suggest that quite a sizable number of MPs may have received their ex-gratia even before President Mills directive to freeze payment was issued.

Sources say contrary to claims by the Controller and Accountant General, Mr Christian Tetteh Sottie that, no ex-gratia payment has been made, the Bank of Ghana (BoG) transferred almost $15 million into the coffers of Parliament for onward delivery to individual MPs by the Clerk of Parliament.

Significantly, the letter for BOG to transfer the amount to Parliament was sent from the Controller and Accountant General’s office on January 20, 2009, almost two weeks before President Mills sought to freeze the payment through a presidential fiat on February 4.

Efforts to reach Presidential Press Secretary Mahama Ayariga by press time on the new developments proved futile.

Sources say the MPs in a bi-partisan rage have for some time now threatened reprisal actions against the President over his withholding of their ex-gratia, with some openly suggesting that his directive to withhold their ex-gratia was illegal and tantamount to a coup d’état.

“Nobody can undo what ex-president Kufuor did” thundered NDC MP for Sene in the Brong Ahafo Region, Twumasi Appiah, when the issue came up recently in a radio interview.

He questioned the constitutional mandate of President Mills to take such action, saying per the Constitution no one has the right to review salaries properly approved by former president Kufuor during his tenure of office.

He said President Mills cannot review the salaries and emoluments due them without recourse to the Constitution and that any attempt by the President to do that would amount to an illegality.