The Executive Director of IMANI Africa, Franklin Cudjoe has responded to a pinpoint allegation by news reporter Paul Adom-Otchere, that a group of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) want the work of a parliamentary committee halted.
He claimed that Cudjoe and others were working to shield Inspector-General of Police (IGP) from potential removal from office and that part of the plan was to accuse a parliamentary committee chairman of bias.
Adom-Otchere on his bi-weekly TV show, earlier this week, alleged severally that IGP George Akuffo Dampare had committed perjury in testimony he gave before the Samuel Atta Akyea parliamentary committee, and that to save himself; he had deployed the CSO leaders to meet Speaker of Parliament Alban Bagbin.
The committee in question is probing a leaked tape in which three police officers and a politician are allegedly plotting to remove the IGP from office
During his presentation, Adom-Otchere claimed to have a back story to the visit of the CSOs to Bagbin and that comments after their meeting suggested that the Speaker agreed with their position to an extent.
In the course of his presentation, Adom-Otchere decided to read text messages on the live show and Cudjoe, one of the CSO leaders who was in the delegation that met Bagbin sent in a message debunking Paul's almost 12 minutes presentation.
"You mean IG sent us to speak with Speaker? Oh No!" his text read.
Adom-Otchere's response to the text was: "Franklin Cudjoe, the first denial, Franklin Cudjoe is denying that the allegation I made here that IGP sent Civil Society to speak to Speaker is not true, so it is not true. This is what Franklin Cudjoe is saying."
He went further to reiterate a point he had repeatedly made that it was odd in the Fourth Republican dispensation for CSOs to protest the work of a committee chairman as they were doing in the case of Samuel Atta Akyea, chair of the leaked tape committee.
"I have never seen Civil Society go to any speaker to tell the speaker that a committee chairman is biased because Minority or Majority rise up to check these things.
"What is Civil Society's interest in there and I dare say Civil Society has an interest in the Dampare matter… tell him that when he appears before a committee he must speak the truth, the whole true and nothing but the truth," he added.
Click to Watch Adom-Otchere's presentation: IGP Dampare and his supporters appear to want to end the committees work midstream
SARA
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Franklin Cudjoe, Founding President of Imani Africa