The Majority Leader in Parliament, Mahama Ayariga, has accused the Minority of prioritising media attention over seeking answers from the Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), following the Minority’s walkout during proceedings on Wednesday, July 15.
Addressing journalists after the incident, Mr. Ayariga argued that the Minority’s demand for the engagement with the BoG Governor to be held in public was inconsistent with Parliament’s established practice of conducting engagements with independent constitutional bodies in private during Committee of the Whole sittings.
“If you read our Standing Orders, it says in Order 266 that meetings of committees shall be held in public except otherwise determined by the committee. So I asked them to convince the entire committee to sit in public. But if you don’t convince the committee to agree to sit in public, you cannot force a committee to sit in public,” he said.
According to him, although the Minority referred to a previous public appearance by a Bank of Ghana Governor before Parliament, they were unable to persuade the Committee of the Whole to adopt a similar arrangement before deciding to walk out.
Mr. Ayariga dismissed suggestions that the Governor, Dr. Johnson Asiama, was seeking to avoid scrutiny, saying the Governor had prepared responses to the questions Parliament intended to ask and was willing to make the information available to the media.
He argued that if the Minority’s priority was accountability, its members would have remained in the chamber to engage the Governor. Instead, he said their actions demonstrated that they were “more interested in the media optics” than obtaining answers from the central bank chief.
The Majority Leader also criticised what he described as the Minority’s disregard for parliamentary procedures, stressing that parliamentary processes must be guided by the Standing Orders rather than the preferences of individual members.
“If you want to do that, you have to approach us, you have to work with us, and we will all agree that this is how we are going to do it,” he stated.
Mr. Ayariga’s comments follow the Minority’s objection to First Deputy Speaker Bernard Ahiafor’s decision to hold the BoG Governor’s briefing behind closed doors. The disagreement resulted in the Minority suspending its participation in the Committee of the Whole proceedings and walking out.
