Top NPP member faces charges for contempt of Parliament

The Speaker of Parliament, Peter Ala Adjetey, on Friday referred to the Privileges Committee, a complaint that one member, Johnson Asiedu Nketsia, NDC Wenchi West, was verbally assaulted by a member of the public.

The Speaker said a prima facie case was established that the MP was molested in the performance of his duties, which was contempt of "this Honourable House".

It was the first time that such an incident was referred to the committee since the third Parliament began its work about a year.

He asked that the case should be investigated and reported to him as soon as practicable. Mr Asiedu Nketsia in his complaint to the House said one Mrs Rosemary Ekwam, a prominent NPP member, verbally assaulted him at the tail end of Mr Spreaker's cocktail party held last Wednesday.

He said the incident took place in the presence of Mr Joe Badu Ansah, NPP Effiah-Kwesimintsim and Mr Yaw Barima, Minister of Works and Housing and a woman whose name he did not know.

Mr Asiedu Nketsia said when Mr Ansah introduced him to the woman, she indicated to him, Mr Nketsia that another woman was "desperately" looking for him.

He said when the second woman appeared and asked him whether he knew her, he replied in the negative. Mr Asiedu Nketsia said the woman introduced herself as Mrs Ekwam, who claimed that he, the MP had lied to the whole world against her in Parliament.

Mr Asiedu quoted the woman as saying: "You lied that I stripped myself naked during an anti-Rawlings demonstration and I will show you my nakedness today. Foolish man."

Mr Asiedu Nketsia said at that juncture, he realised that the woman was the author of a letter to the Speaker sometime after the parliamentary vetting of the President's nominees for ministerial appointments.

Mr Asiedu Nketsia, who is a member of the appointments committee, said the woman complained about an allegation supposed to have been made by him against Mrs Ekwam.

Mr Asiedu Nketsia said he had dismissed the allegation as baseless and based on misinformation and even requested that the recorded proceedings at the vetting session be replayed for her to hear at first hand what transpired at the hearing of Ms Theresa Tagoe.

He said his information was that that was done by the Speaker's good office and until the day of the incident "I thought she was convinced about the baselessness of her allegation."

Mr Asiedu Nketsia said: "If this incident was to be an isolated case, I would have allowed it to pass with the contempt it deserved. "However, it comes in the sequence of incidents involving me, which are too similar to be dismissed as coincidence."

Mr Asiedu Nketsia recounted that when Mr Benjamin Osei Kufuor, NPP Asunafo North, had declined the offer to become a deputy minister "I was confronted at the car park of this House by some two men, who claimed to be the relatives of Mr Osei Kufuor, they insulted and warned me never to set foot in Mim, their home town. "This incident was witnessed by an honourable member of this House."

Mr Asiedu Nketsia said: "On the 31st day of August, 2001, I was attacked by a mob led by no less a person than the Brong Ahafo Regional Chairman of the NPP, Mr Yaboah Fordjour, at a radio station in Sunyani.

"On the fourth of October 2001, my pickup came under attack by a group of NPP youth in Sabiye Banda, who had laid ambush on a high way.

"This, I later learnt was organised by the District Chief Executive of Wenchi, who had contested me in the last election on the NPP ticket."

He quoted standing orders 28 and 30J and 1 and 31 and prayed the Speaker that the complaints raised be referred to the Privileges Committee.

He declared: "I will like to assure both my funs and detractors that I will never be deterred from performing my lawful duties as a member of Parliament and I will do this with my conscience very intact."