Calls for Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta to resign and or be sacked by the President continues to dominate the news with persons within and outside the New Patriotic Party, NPP, calling for his head.
The calls from outside has been led by former President John Dramani Mahama, who in two public forums called for Ofori-Atta to be sacked for economic mismanagement.
Other members of the opposition National Democratic Congress, NDC, have also joined the calls, chief among them, Isaac Adongo, MP for Bolgatanga Central and Felix Kwakye Ofosu, an aide to Mahama.
Internally, Ofori-Atta has not escaped censure and calls for him to step aside especially over the government’s decision to turn to the International Monetary Fund for an economic rescue programme amid an acute economic downturn in the last few months.
The latest to call on him to resign is from Kwabena Agyapong, former General Secretary of the NPP who spoke in an interview on the Hard Truth show on a YouTube TV page.
According to Agyapong, the Minister must on his own volition tender his resignation because of his anti-IMF statements and having “got it wrong.”
“I will think that on the basis of what he (Ofori-Atta) said two weeks before to the whole country, which is that we will never go to the IMF and we are a proud country and we have the resources….
“When you speak like that, you should look yourself in the mirror and say ‘I got it wrong,’ Mr. President I thank you for the opportunity and I should stand down,” Agyapong stressed.
Weeks back, former political science lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Dr. Richard Amoako Baah also called for Ofori-Atta to go.
“First of all we are not his children. The second thing is that if you are a father and you are not taking good care of your children, the social services will come and take the children away from you and may put you in jail,” he stated in reaction to Ofori-Atta’s explanation for why he was not going to quit.
In an interview with Joy News, the embattled Minister said quitting will amount to a case of abandonment as of a father an his children.
But Amoako Baah said Ofori-Atta’s response “makes no sense”.
The third leading member to wade into the issue is former Chief of Staff under the Kufour administration, Kwadwo Mpiani.
Kwadwo Mpiani, like Kwabena Agyapong cited anti-IMF statements that Ofori-Atta had made prior to the July 1 announcement that government was entering into a programme.
“Honestly, if I were the Finance Minister, from my utterances and then what has been happening, I will just go and say Mr President, thank you so much. I think it best for me to sit back for another person to take over’. That will be my personal decision.
“But I am not going to tell any President to drop the Finance Minister or any Minister. That should be left to the President,” he said on Thursday, July 14.