<<Print>>

Outspoken Member of Parliament for the North Tongu Constituency, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has lashed at the Opposition New Patriotic party for their futile attempt to smear President Mahama with corruption allegations. He said “Mahama is incorruptible and will never be”.

Mr Ablakwa said the President has proved beyond reasonable doubt that Ghanaians can trust him with the public purse that’s why his image keeps soaring by the minute.”

Mr Okudzeto was speaking on “This Day” program on Accra based Tv3.His comments follow the minority New Patriotic Party’s (NPP’s) call for parliamentary probe into the receipt of a Ford Expedition gift by President John Mahama.

President Mahama is said to have taken a 2010 Ford Expedition vehicle valued at about $100,000 in 2012 from a Burkinabe contractor, Djibril Kanazoe, after which a number of government contracts were awarded to him (Kanazoe).

But the Member of Parliament who is also a Deputy Minister said the Minority MP’s insistence on getting Parliament to probe the issue is borne out of mischief and a calculated but failed attempt to soil the image of the president. He said the NPP doesn’t have a message hence their quest to latch on trivial issues just to score cheap political points.

“TheSupreme Court has clearly stated that for matters like this which has to do with conflict of interest and abuse of office, the best body mandated to deal with matters like this is the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice. The Minority is very much aware of this and so one wonders why the Minority will make all of us waste our precious time and resources to reconvene over an issue as trivial as this. The NPP has lost it. The NPP must learn to take Ghanaians seriously and stop wasting everybody’s time” he added.

He reiterated that President Mahama is innocent and that any attempt to mar the reputation of the President will not fly. He said the logic behind the intention of the NPP to impeach the president is weak and unacceptable. He questioned why the NPP couldn’t wait till December 7 for the President to lose the elections as they claim

“This car gift issue as we have said time and again is much ado about nothing. It’s pure mischief. Every president around the world has accepted a gift before. Bill Clinton has received before, David Cameron has, If you come to Ghana, since Nkrumah’s days, presidents have received gifts. Who documents a bribe if indeed what the minority is saying is anything to go by. How can anybody conclude the President has taken a bribe? Since when did gifts to our President become a bribe? Weren’t we in this country when the Libyan president gave a luxurious plush Mercedes Benz to the then President Kufour sometime in 2007? Did we term that as a bribe? Please let’s move beyond these kind of politics and take Ghanaians seriously” he added.

“This is the same people who claim the president has performed so abysmally that Ghanaians will vote him out come December 2016, so do they want him impeached, they should wait and vote him out in December. The same Minority said they wanted the president out so badly and yet when the EC wanted to conduct the elections on Nov 7 they kicked against it so how can you take such a party seriously?”, he asked.

He questioned the NPP’s moral authority to speak to issues of corruption when the party itself has been saddled with corruption issues. He said the NPP must clean its house first and respond to the numerous calls from thousands of NPP supporters who want to know how the missing 1.5 million dollars in that Ecobank ‘secret’ account operated by the First National Vice-Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Freddie Blay and Treasurer, Kwabena Abankwa Yeboah.