Former Majority Leader Alban Bagbin has described as “shocking” the presence of former Journalist Stan Dogbe, at the Flagstaff House as a Presidential Staffer.

Responding to Dogbe’s attacks on him as a “big liar” concerning his (Bagbin’s) claims that he was not gaining access to the president to give him private counsel about the festering corruption in the country, the former health minister told the media Monday that Stan Dogbe’s attacks are untenable.

He said: “It’s shocking…that people like Stan Dogbe [are] at the heart of governance following the president around”.

“By even his body language and his utterances, he’s not [one of] such people who should be following President Mahama….These are not the characters that should be following him”, Bagbin blurted.

Stan Dogbe, in his response to Bagbin’s claims of not gaining access to the president, wrote in an article that the former minority leader’s quest to portray himself as more concerned about fighting corruption than the president, smacked of double standards, since he (Bagbin), virtually did nothing to tackle issues of corruption at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital while he was the minister of health.

Bagbin, however, rebuffed that argument on Monday.

“…I’m surprised that my 8 months’ stewardship at the ministry of health is what Stan Dogbe has attacked….And what he ignorantly doesn’t know is that it’s not the minister who takes the decision. The minister takes the things to the Presidency and the presidency takes the decision. “The minister doesn’t establish a Board. A Board is established by the president and everybody knows what I did about the Korle Bu Board when I got to the ministry of health…I only served 8 months there; they have been in government since last year up to his month, but they are still in first gear and he is expecting that within those first 8 months, I should have solved all the problems in Korle Bu and he is using that to attack me”, the Nadowli – Kaleo MP told Okay FM.

According to Bagbin, the president is completely detached from the party.

“…If you go round the country, the statements people are making is that, ‘this is not the government of NDC; this is a government of John Mahama’s family and friends….we have to tell him for him to be able to change and put the people who brought the manifesto into place and fought for him to be president to be put in charge of the governance of this country to make sure that we implement what we promised the people. “President Mahama alone cannot implement it. It is the party that promised the people; it is the party that elected him to lead them and it is the party that should be in charge”, he argued.