Maintain Haruna Iddrisu's leadership in Parliament – Dr Benjamin Kunbuor cautions

Dr Benjamin Kunbuor has called on the National Executive of the opposition NDC to rescind their decision to reconstitute the Minority Leadership in Parliament which is headed by Haruna Iddrisu, the Tamale South MP.

According to him, the dynamics in Parliament are completely different because there is a parliamentary system and body language that takes place and it is only understood by those who have had an opportunity to become parliamentarians.

“If you were to attempt [changing] the parliamentary leadership now, you are going to now build a formidable internal opposition in parliament; as a result of that, [the current minority leadership will become] not ordinary backbenchers but former leaders of the side and it can be devastating for your political party,” he explained.

Dr Kunbuor stressed that there have been reconstitution of the NDC's parliamentary leadership before but it was mostly done through “negotiations and dialogue, where people agreed to step aside and not an imposition. So, if you don’t negotiate this thing properly, people will be dissatisfied about it.”

When asked if he had his way the Haruna Iddrisu cum Mubarak-led Minority Leadership should remain as it is, Dr Kunbuor answered in the affirmative and explained:

“Because actually, we have what we called the extended leadership; your four front bench is as strong as their ranking members behind them and the backbenchers. So, when you are getting this type of failure and you look at it only at the level of the front bench, you could be making a mistake. It has a linkage with the immediate extended leadership and then it has some linkage with the backbenchers.”

The NDC leadership has come under recent public criticism for approving some appointees of the Akufo-Addo administration despite having equal numbers of MPs in a hung parliament.

The General Secretary of the NDC in response to criticism on the matter said that his side will be reconstituting the leadership of the minority side in parliament.

“We haven’t done that yet because of the court case [election petition]…we started but we got to a point where we felt that we need[ed] to finish with the court case and we will come back to it. So, it is something that we are going to do,” Asiedu Nketia said in an earlier media interview.

He explained at that time: “when you have a situation where some people think that these people are not permanent, they themselves do not have the confidence to act in the way they should be acting and then other aspirants who want to occupy their position will act in a way that will upstage or undermine them…”