Member of Parliament for New Juaben South, Dr. Mark Assibey-Yeboah, has dragged the Attorney-General (A-G), Electricity Company of Ghana, and the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation to the Supreme Court over the country’s agreement with Karpower of Turkey for the purchasing of power badges.
A writ of summons to that effect has been filed with the legislator seeking among other reliefs an order to compel the Government of Ghana to send the Karpower agreement to Parliament for consideration and subsequent approval.
The writ, Kasapafmonline.com learnt, was filed Friday, June 19, 2015.
Dr. Assibey-Yeboah who is an economist told this website that he is “in full support of the agreement but only wants the right thing to be done.”
“When it comes to Parliament, that is where we will be able to scrutinize the deal well to know which companies are the local partners, how much money is involved, what are the repayment terms and the purchase agreement.”
“But if you circumvent parliament and go ahead with the deal, then it means you are not showing respect to the legislature. The constitution is clear and the Supreme Court will decide.”
His Counsel is Mr. Alexander Afenyo-Markins, MP for Effutu in the Central Region.
He said what has even strengthened his case is the fact that the government has issued a comfort to support the agreement.
“The constitution says that any international financial agreement should be brought to Parliament but Government is saying that the Attorney-General has advised that the deal should not be brought to Parliament for approval. ECG is the firm that is buying the power badges, GNPC is also giving them guarantees and the Government has issued a comfort letter.”
“If you have ECG owned by the Government, GNPC owned by the government, comfort letter from the government, then the whole deal is government. Comfort letter is a guarantee given by the government to ECG.”
“Now if the government has issued a comfort letter, then the deal must come to parliament for approval. Why is that they don’t want to bring it to parliament? Is there anything secret about the deal that they don’t want anybody to know, why? We think that it must be brought to Parliament.”
By: Kasapafmonline.com/Ghana
