[ 2015-03-25 ]

Afenyo Markin petitions President Mahama over ‘dubious’ power deal
The Member of Parliament for Effutu, Alexander
Afenyo Markin, has sent a strongly-worded petition
to President John Mahama to direct the power
minister to bring the power purchase agreement
between the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and
KarPower Ghana Limited to parliament for
approval.

Acting as a solicitor for Dr Mark Assibey-Yeboah,
another New Patriotic Party (NPP) MP who had
threatened to take the government to court if it
failed to do the right thing, Mr Afenyo-Markin
said the agreement which is intended to supply 450
megawatts of power, is in breach of Article 181
Clause 5 of the 1992 Constitution which states
that parliament may by a resolution supported by
the votes of majority of the Members of
Parliament, authorize the government to enter into
an agreement for the granting of a loan out of any
public fund or public account and that this
Article 5 shall, with the necessary modifications
by parliament apply to an international business
or economic transaction to which the government is
a party as it applies to a loan.

“Mr President, my client is well aware that your
government is acting on the advice of your able
Attorney-General, but he strongly holds the view
that on this occasion, the learned
Attorney-General has erred in sanctioning the
transaction to be executed without parliamentary
approval,” Afenyo-Markin said in the petition,
adding that the president should give an urgent
and favourable attention to the petition to avoid
the situation where the court might have to
intervene in the matter.

According to the Effutu MP, even though his client
appreciates the efforts of the president in
bringing the regular power outages known popularly
as dumsor dumsor – which has persisted for the
past three years – to an end, he strongly
believes in democratic accountability and
transparency, and that was why he had petitioned
the president.

“The people’s representatives who constitute
parliament have the sole mandate of approving all
international commercial transactions of which the
state is a party; and in this particular instance,
my client contends that the failure of your
government to lay the KarPower purchase agreement
in parliament prior to its execution, is not only
an usurpation of the mandate of parliament and a
breach of the constitution but also an affront to
democratic accountability and transparency,”
Afenyo-Markin said in the petition dated March 23,
2015.

Source - MyjoyOnline

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