The New Patriotic Party (NPP) side of the transition team has described the way the transition was handled as “inquisitorial in nature and one-sided, which is contrary to best practices of transition”.
The party claimed that at the subcommittee level the whole transition process ?????deteriorated????? and out of the nine subcommittees only two — Executive Assets and Economy — had meetings involving members of both the previous and current administrations.
Briefing the media yesterday, Mr Kwadwo Mpiani, the leader of the NPP team and Co-chairman of the Transition Team, said there was a clear attempt by the government side to paint the former government in a bad light to Ghanaians.
“A report that emanate from such efforts cannot and should not be presented as a joint report and as we have said, we cannot be expected to claim co-ownership of it,” he said.
The Transition Team was formed after the declaration of the 2008 presidential results to ensure smooth transfer of administration from the NPP to the National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration.
It is co-chaired by Mr Paul Victor Obeng for the NDC and Mr Kwadwo Okyere Mpiani for the outgoing government. The team had nine joint subcommittees all under joint chairmanship.
At a press conference attended by the party executive, former ministers of state and Members of Parliament, Mr Mpiani, who is the immediate former Chief of Staff in the Kufuor Administration, explained that the two sides held three joint meetings at the plenary level and the meetings fit the mould of a normal transition.
“After the third meeting it was agreed that the next meeting would be convened after the various joint subcommittees with co-chairs have completed their work and submitted their reports. It was further agreed that the transition process should end by January 31, 2009,” he added.
He said even with the only two subcommittees that had meetings, members representing the NDC decided to meet alone without notifying members of the previous administration.
“At the subcommittee on the Economy, our members were told that the meetings were being held under the auspices of the new administration and our members could only talk when asked to do so,” Mr Mpiani said.
He said at the Executive Assets Committee, which had only four meetings for all four members, they were able to symbolically transfer the Osu Castle, Peduase Lodge and the Golden Jubilee House to the new administration.
According to him, after the fourth meeting, the NDC members of the Executive Assets Committee also started behaving like the other subcommittees, meeting only members of the current administration and “transformed itself into some sort of inquisitorial committee, contrary to the norms of a proper and efficient transition”.
Mr Mpiani said after the members of the Transition Team had finished with their “one-sided” reports, which did not include views from members of the former government, Mr Obeng had written to the NPP side to invite them to a meeting “to agree on some loose ends taking into cognisance the principle of fair play”.
He said the NDC had by their own admission stated that they had written their reports based on meetings they held with bureaucrats and officials, therefore the gesture was coming too late in the day.
He, however, suggested that if the draft reports were given to them with adequate time to study, the NPP side would provide their input to address what the NDC termed “the loose ends” for the report to have credibility and balance.
Mr Mpiani described as “egregious” the manner the Auditor-General was invited to present a draft audit report on the only celebration in the full glare of the media, which is unethical about the accounting profession, the summoning and interrogation of vehicle suppliers to the Ghana@50 Secretariat, as well as the leaking of half-truths to the media.
He also condemned the way the government operatives went about seizing vehicles from officials of former government functionaries and ordinary Ghanaians in the name of retrieving state vehicles.
No comments:
Post a Comment