The Member of Parliament (MP) for Abuakwa South, Samuel Atta Akyea, has cautioned the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) against its rhetoric on allegations of corruption in the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo government.
According to him, the NDC has resorted to concluding that allegations of wrongdoing in the government are crimes without any shred of evidence.
He gave this caution while reacting to members of the NDC, including the National Communication Officer of the party, Sammy Gyamfi, saying that government officials and individuals implicated in the $12 million expenditure on the suspended Agyapa Royalties deal are guilty of a crime and would be dealt with if they come to power.
Atta Akyea argued that the fact that something went wrong in the Agyapa deal does not necessarily imply that a crime was committed.
He cautioned that the NDC was only endangering Ghana’s democracy with its baseless allegations, which are only aimed at winning the favour of Ghanaians for the upcoming elections, myjoyonline.com reports.
“Bear in mind that in this feverish pitch to succeed Akufo-Addo, the NDC should not sort of make a fetish of every issue as if everything is criminal.
“This nation is not safe with this level of propaganda, and press conferences are not just conclusive evidence of culpability and criminality, as it were. I want to stress also, let’s be careful. If there is a poor error of judgment in the investment in Agyapa, it will not be tantamount to criminality,” the MP is quoted to have said on JoyNews’ Top Story.
Sammy Gyamfi, who was also on the show, contended that if there were no illegalities with the Agyapa deal, the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) would not have suspended it.
He said that OSP’s investigation proved that the Agyapa deal was not beneficial to the state, which led to its suspension.
“If the Special prosecutor was not a court and the President does not agree with the position of the Special Prosecutor, why suspend the bill?” he quizzed.
However, Atta Akyea did not agree with the NDC national communications officer’s suggestion.
He said that if the NDC has an issue with the deal, they should go to court and should stop calling people who have not been found guilty of any crimes criminals.
“If you convert the thinking of NDC to the decision of a court of competent jurisdiction, we know what the law is like.
“The accused persons will have a right to stand; they present the evidence and the rest of it, and it will culminate in a decision. If we don’t go this route and we still believe that in the name of propaganda, let’s turn the laws of Ghana upside down, and in the convenience of a one-sided press conference, let’s denigrate others; I am afraid that is not democracy, that is propaganda,” the MP said.
Source: ghanaweb.com