The Information Minister Mustapha Hamid has slammed the Minority in parliament for allegedly leaking the military agreement between the governments of Ghana and United States even before the House commenced the debate to ratify it.
The conduct of the Minority, according to Hamid undermines the sanctity of the Parliament.
Speaking at a press conference Wednesday where the Defence Minister Dominic Nitiwul disclosed that Ghana cannot back out of the controversial agreement, Mr. Hamid said: “Now this is the second time a document goes to the House of representatives of the people and then NDC elements in that Parliament rushed these documents to the [traditional] media, social media and public spaces in order to either undercut, undermine or destroy the credibility of the debate and discussions that will be going on in that Parliament.”
“How can you be a member of Parliament and be leaking documents that are meant for discussion in that Parliament in order to if you want generate public discourse and if you want excite opprobrium for the government of the day?” he asked.
He continued “when you do that you are undermining the very House from which you derive your legitimacy as a participant in our democratic process.”
He thus called on the NDC legislators to be decorous and “begin to the respect the sanctity of parliament.”
We cannot back out
Government of Ghana, according to a leaked document, has approved the agreement with the US to set up a military base in Ghana and also allow unrestricted access to a host of facilities and wide-ranging tax exemptions to the United States Military—a claim the government of Ghana and the US denied.
That notwithstanding, the Minority insists that the government is selling Ghana’s sovereignty to the United States by allowing America to set up a military base in the country, leading to pressure mounting on government to pull out of the deal with security analysts also warning that it could expose Ghana to terror attacks.
But the government stated that it cannot back out of the controversial military agreement despite the public outcry and protests from the minority.
“We have already signed a 1998 agreement, we have signed the 2015 agreement and we have already caught ourselves in this net and we cannot back out because this is just a combination of the two agreements,” said Mr. Nitiwul Wednesday at the press conference.
Source: Ghana/Starrfmonline.com/103.5FM
