Member of Parliament for Bolga East, Dr. Dominic Akuritinga Ayine says MP for Asawase, Muntaka Mubarak should have investigated the bribery allegations he made against a Supreme Court judge before making it public.
The Chief Whip of the NDC Caucus in Parliament had on January 10, 2021 revealed in an interview on JoyNews that the attempted bribe took place on the eve of the inauguration of the 8th Parliament.
According to him, his female colleague was offered good incentives in order to vote for Prof Aaron Mike Oquaye as the Speaker against the NDC’s Alban Bagbin.
“Shamefully, a Supreme Court judge called a lady colleague telling her what they will give her if she votes for Prof Mike Oquaye. He told her that, they will help her take care of her children. She can take fuel from a filling station for free for the next four years.
“So we [NDC] are going to look into it. We will look at the time he made those calls,” he told JoyNews’ Emefa Apawu.
However, Muntaka Mubarak has retracted and apologized for his comment after being condemned by the Ghana Bar Association and other members of the general public for his remarks.
In his retraction and apology letter he said, “Based upon good counsel, I have also decided to let sleeping dogs lie and will consequently refrain from any further public commentary on the matter which, as I have indicated was originally reported to me by a female colleague Parliamentarian.”
With reference to parts of Mr. Mubarak’s letter, Dr. Ayine claimed that the declaration was issued in order to calm the nerves and ensure that the relationship between the judiciary and the legislature does not break apart.
“I don’t want any public comment that will end up doing damage to the reason why the statement has been issued,” he added.
Dr. Ayine said on Saturday’s JoyNews Newsfile that if the case had been strongly pursued, many
public inquirements would have contributed to the improvement of ties between the legislature and the judiciary.
He also said that Mr. Mubarak should have done the requisite checks before going public when he was told about a judge of the Supreme Court trying to bribe an MP.
“Now ought he to have made it public before enquiring into its truthfulness or otherwise, he did not do so before going public and I think that, that is where he erred. If he had investigated, he would have found out that maybe the person who placed the call was not a Supreme Court justice after all or he was just pretending to be a Supreme Court justice.”
He further revealed that the NDC had initiated an investigation into the allegation but would not make their findings public.
“We actually went to MTN, got the numbers, and the calls that came to her, traced them, and so on and so forth.”
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