PPP Aspiring National Chairman, Nana Ofori Owusu has described the swearing in of Speaker of Parliament as President when President Nana Akufo-Addo and Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia are absent from the nation as pure “nonsense”.
According to him, there is absolutely no common sense in mandating the Speaker to act in the stead of the President when the President or the Vice President is away.
Nana Ofori Owusu expounded that it would be admissible to swear the Speaker to act as President if he (President) is no more alive.
He told host Kwami Sefa Kayi that this culture of the Speaker becoming Head of State is nonsensical because it means “now, we can have an international President for Ghana and local President for Ghana. That is what we are making. So we now have an international President, Nana Akufo-Addo…and we have President Mike Oquaye Snr who’s also a President”.
“There’s no sense in it. If you look into critically, I don’t think it’s anything to help our country, Ghana. Why should there be two Presidents at the same time . . . I think we have interpreted the constitution wrongly or the framers didn’t frame it correctly”.
Nana Ofori Owusu asked President Nana Akufo-Addo to stop his travels because “when you travel, you’re not the President. This is not fair for us as Ghanaians; we as a people. So now, in case of any crises, something happens in Ghana; who do we hold accountable. Is it the President at large or the local President”.
He emphasized that there will be no economic development if the leadership of the country doesn’t address the constitutional problems confronting the country.
” . . we continue to look at the problem, talk around it, dance around it and then when we finish, we sit there and put our arms between our legs . . . We lie to ourselves. We deceive ourselves. And we have leaders that they have to be able to climb out of doldrums. They have to wake up. You cannot have a nation that’s competing against other nations, then you have a flaw in your constitution that’s crippling you; doesn’t allow you to do many things and then you continue to look at this book that is sitting there and point to the book that the book is the problem. The problem is leadership who cannot take the decisions to change provisions in the book. This book is not the Quran. It’s not the Torah. It’s not the Bible. This book is an enactment of a people meaning we made the book and so we have the ability to change . . . We’re such a hypocritical nation. We cannot tell the truth nor face the truth”, he said.
