A member of Parliament’s Appointments Committee, Mahama Ayariga has debunked claims that the minority caucus on the Committee has made a u-turn to approve a deputy energy minister nominee, Andrew Egyapa Mercer.
According to him, the minority never took a decision to stop Egyapa Mercer’s approval but rather asked for time to deliberate on some concerns raised during his vetting.
Among the issues raised was the nominee’s conflict of interest situation in the botched PDS deal.
“There is some misinformation that our minority side rejected him. There was no decision to reject him. We said we needed more time to probe into the matter. That was what we asked for yesterday [Monday]. We did an analysis of the issue and we continued this [Tuesday] morning,” he said.
He said the committee considered two major issues raised against the nominee but after deliberations, it concluded that Mr. Egyapa Mercer’s nomination be approved as the issues are not strong enough basis to block his approval.
“One of us raised an issue and requested that we should give some more time for consideration of that issue, and so we agreed that we will not vote on him yesterday [Monday], and after the sitting we analysed the issues. By the end of today [Tuesday] when we concluded deliberations, we came to the conclusion that our side would not want to withhold his nomination,” he explained.
He said the member of the committee who raised the objection was advised to consider using the Privileges Committee to make his case and get some resolution.
“We looked through it and concluded that it is a matter that should be raised with the Privileges Committee.”
The Bawku Central legislator said the development in no way suggested a u-turn or a deliberate decision by the minority caucus to block the nominee’s approval.
Source: Modern Ghana
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