OB Amoah’s Arrest Unwarranted – Minority

NEW PATRIOTIC Party (NPP) Members of Parliament have taken on the Mills administration over the arrest of their colleague, Osei Bonsu Amoah, describing the act as a baseless and fruitless attempt to cover up the huge Woyome scandal.

According to the Minority group, the arrest of Osei Bonsu Amoah, popularly known as OB Amoah, MP for Aburi/Nsawam, was just a grand design by the Atta Mills-led government to bring NPP into the scandal and blur the issue and let perpetrators of the massive fraud off the hook.

OB Amoah, a former deputy minister for sports, science and education under the Kufuor administration, was arrested by armed police Sunday evening at his Parakuo Estate residence at Dome and detained in police cells over the Woyome scandal in which the Mills administration had doled out over GH¢51million to Alfred Agbesi Woyome for no work done.

However, speaking at a news conference in Parliament House yesterday on the arrest, the Minority caucus wondered why an innocent person like OB Amoah was arrested by the police when the people who 'criminally authorized' the payment of the huge sums of taxpayers' money to Mr. Woyome were not invited.

'We the NPP Members of Parliament see no credible reason for this arrest. It is a baseless and fruitless enterprise the police are embarking on, it is manifestly and patently an exercise in political equalization,' the Minority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu stated.

'If these attempts are a contrivance to blur the picture and let the perpetrators of this gargantuan fraud pass through the net of justice, we will assure all and sundry that if truth is suppressed today, it will emerge tomorrow,' he stated.

President Mills had been on record to have said that he could not have been 'irresponsible and criminally-minded to order the payment of such huge sums of judgment debt to Mr. Woyome'.

Evidence available, according to Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, had established that former Attorney-General, Mrs. Betty Mould-Iddrisu was the person who authorized the payment, under supervision of the Finance Minister, Dr. Kwabena Duffuor.

'By the account of the President, Betty Mould-Iddrisu is irresponsible and criminally-minded for authorizing payment to Woyome. In the circumstance, why will police not go for Mrs. Betty Mould-Iddrisu?' Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, who is also the MP for Suame, Kumasi quizzed.

The arrest of OB Amoah, the Minority leader reiterated, was an affront to the dignity of Parliament as an institution and the MP as it was in contravention of Articles 117 and 122 of the 1992 constitution.

These constitutional provisions, Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu pointed out, had explicitly granted immunity from service of process and arrest of Members of Parliament on parliamentary duties and in particular, OB Amoah, who was arrested at the time he was returning from proceedings of a committee of Parliament.

Article 117 of the 1992 states that 'civil or criminal process coming from any court or place out of Parliament shall not be served on, or executed in relation to, the Speaker or a member or the Clerk to Parliament while he is on his way to, attending at or returning from, any proceedings of Parliament'.

Furthermore, Article 122 of the constitution states that 'an act or omission which obstructs or impedes Parliament in the performance of its function or which obstructs or impedes a member or officer of Parliament in the discharge of his duties, or affronts the dignity of Parliament or which tends either directly or indirectly to produce that result, is contempt Parliament'.

Arrests of MPs, Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu noted, were becoming too much, citing the apprehension of Samuel Atta Akyea, MP for Akim Abuakwa South, to buttress his point.

Meanwhile, Speaker Justice Bamford-Addo has directed the Minority Leader and Majority Leader Cletus Avoka to set up an adhoc committee to fashion out means of preventing breaches of parliamentary immunity and report back to the House within a week.

This followed a suggestion by the Minority leader, supported by the Majority leader.

By Awudu Mahama
 
 

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