While many have emerged to pick holes in Electoral Commission Chair, Charlotte Osei’s submission and responses before Parliament, Member of Parliament for Juaboso, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh believes the EC Boss’ responses were very candid and on point.
According to him, Mrs. Osei was very well organized in her submissions, relaying accurate information before the house and keeping her composure even when there seemed to be a bit of pressure.
“The woman has won my respect to another level. What I realized was that she was on top of issues and questions that could have easily angered her, she responded with smiles. She was very honest to the people of this country. For me, she was very much on top of issues”, he said.
Explaining why he had to be called out by the Speaker during proceedings on Wednesday, Mr. Akandoh explained that he was merely trying to get the Majority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah to correct an “unparliamentary” comment he had made earlier.
“The speaker mentioned my name for all to hear, said ‘I can hear you from where I’m sitting’, we all make mistakes sometimes, Majority leader goofed when he made those comments, I would not want to repeat the comments, we call some statements parliamentary language which made us a little angry and we were just trying to tell him to withdraw and he kept defending it”.
Majority Leader, sparked an uproar from the Minority side after he made comments suggesting the latter had deafening problems.
“Mr. Speaker, the EC Chair is here, I’m being told that she didn’t say so, unless people have wax in their ears”.
His comments came after Minority members suggested the EC Boss had not said some monies for accreditation cards and replacement of ID’s had not been captured in the 2017 financial report. According to him, he disagreed with Minority’s stance that all the answers provided by Mrs. Osei were satisfactory.
Meanwhile, Minister of Communications, Ursula Owusu has said the Electoral Commission’s (EC) figures representing monies it accrued from accreditation fees issued for the 2016 December elections do not add up.
The Chairperson of the Commission, appeared before Parliament on Wednesday to brief the house on how much the commission made from the controversial fees it charged journalists for accreditation ahead of the 2016 general elections.
Mrs. Charlotte in her submission told the house, that the monies were intact and had been transferred into the commission’s GCB bank account, explaining that failure to document the details in the 2017 financial report was an oversight which she has to consult the Financial Director about.
According to her, the total amount of GHC 42,710 generated from the accreditation fees and the over GHC 2.5 million collected for replacing Voter’s ID Cards could not have been spent without the approval of the Financial Director.
