'Absentee' Adwoa Safo is a target of political witch-hunt to achieve narrow political goals - Kofi Bentil

Adwoa Safo has been referred to the Privileges Committee

She has been absent from Parliament for more than 15 days

Kofi Bentil thinks it is a political witch-hunt

Lawyer Kofi Bentil, Senior Vice President of IMANI Africa, has indicated that, Sarah

Read full articleAdwoa Safo, the absentee MP for Dome-Kwabenya MP, was a target of a political witch-hunt before she was referred to the Privileges Committee by Speaker Alban Bagbin.

According to him, some political elites want the removal of the MP who doubles as the Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection to score their political goals.

Bentil, who was speaking in an interview on JoyNews’ Newsfile, Saturday, claims the element of witch-hunting the MP who has been absent from the House has brought about several debates and disagreements, even among her colleague MPs.

He explained, “Adwoa Safo was the target of a political witch-hunt. She was the target of certain people to achieve certain very narrow political goals. But we need to go back a bit; before the last election, I was one of the lawyers working with Odekro, and we had gone to court on this same issue.

“The issue was that there were too many parliamentarians who take monthly salaries, take allowances, and they don’t go to work."

“Out of the 275 parliamentarians that we have, it is our reckoning that less than half of them go to work regularly – less than 50% go to work regularly, and less than 50% contribute to the parliamentary discourse, debates, lawmaking, et cetera.

“We think that is a high cost on this country; we need to do something about it. Some of us believe that we have too many parliamentarians; we are not getting values from them,” he stressed.

Kofi Bentil, therefore, called on stakeholders “to find a way in this republic to make sure that we get as much as we can out of our parliamentarians.”
“So, way back then, some of us took the step [but] that case was never called until the election was over. My issue is this; we need to find a way to make our Parliament effective.”

He is of the view that, MPs absenting themselves from duty is becoming endemic and must urgently be addressed.

Alban Bagbin, Speaker of Parliament, on Tuesday, April 5 referred three members of the House to the Privileges Committee for their continuous absence in Parliament.

According to the Speaker, the three legislators have breached the 15-day absence rule, hence his decision to refer them to the Privileges Committee for the necessary actions to be taken.

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