General News of Thursday, 21 July 2005

Source: --

Hotel Kufuor: No Room For Bogus Debate

Hon. Freddy Blay, the First Deputy Speaker of Parliament has stated in an interview that the motion to be moved by the Minority in Parliament over the 践otel Kufuor' transaction would be thrown away if they (Minority) put up bogus and unsubstantiated allegations before the House.

Hon. Freddy Blay who is also the Member of Parliament for Ellembelle Constituency of the Nzema East District, said that Parliament is not like the FM stations where people say all kinds of things and get away without substantiating them. "Now if it is worthy, it would come up for a serious debate, if anybody says anything that he cannot substantiate, he would be made to withdraw it, Freddy Blay said.

The Ellembele MP noted that the Minority should have moved the motion earlier on instead of deciding to run the debate on radio stations where everybody says what he wants. "They should have done this long ago, they only did it last week Friday", he observed. The first deputy speaker of Parliament said the minority only wanted to flog the matter so as to be able to drag it for a while. He said judging from the comments in the media over the issue he could foresee people taking extreme and entrenched party positions.

Meanwhile, Hon. Bagbin in an interview has said that the minority is not going to rely on any statement or provide anything to the House but rather would rely on Parliament's investigative body to investigate the matter in the interest of good governance.

Hon. Bagbin reiterated that they are not calling for impeachment. Rather they want to understand exactly what happened in the transaction so that if there are any mistakes to learn from as a country, that would be done.

Asked wither he was suspicious that the motion was being deliberately delayed. Hon. Bagbin affirmed that the motion was going through the normal process.