Anti-corruption campaigner, Sydney Casely-Hayford has condemned the Appointment Committee of Parliament for dragging the vetting process of Martin Amidu.
According to him, about 80% of the questions asked by the members of the committee were not necessary and irrelevant to the position Martin Amidu had been nominated for.
Martin Amidu, on Tuesday, February 13, faced Parliament’s Appointments Committee in what could probably be the longest ever parliamentary vetting session for an individual in the 4th Republic.
Speaking on The Big Issue today on Citi FM, Casely-Hayford said given Martin Amidu’s established competence and repute, the Committee could have completed the vetting in about two hours.
“There is absolutely no reason why we should grill somebody for 8 hours for a position that he is going to get anyway… With where Martin Amidu has put his stand as a citizen vigilante and the things he has done and the way the people of this country feel about him, I doubt very much if this country will tolerate a rejection of Martin Amidu’s nomination as the Special Prosecutor…I would say that 80% of the questions that were asked were not necessary and we could have gone home within an hour or two,†Casely-Hayford said.
“I found that we played a little fuss there and it didn’t seem like a necessary thing especially some of the questions that we were trying to get into; what happened to his ‘O’ and ‘A’ level certificate and all that. This for me was a problem…We frankly needed to simply establish the fact that he is qualified for the job and he is going to do the job… Those for me were the critical things we needed to address,†he added.
The Special Prosecutor nominee Martin Alamisi Amidu responded to over 180 questions from all members of the committee in the over 7-hour long session.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) minority asked the most questions; making 75% of all queries, with the caucus’ leader, Haruna Iddrisu, being individual who asked the most number of questions.
 primenewsghana.com/Ghana News
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