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Chairman of Parliament’s Appointments Committee, Bernard Ahiafor, has taken a swipe at Minority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, for what he perceives as the latter’s inability to adjust to his new role in the opposition.
Speaking in an interview on Accra-based Joy News, Ahiafor, who is also the Member of Parliament (MP) for Akatsi South, expressed frustration over the posture of Afenyo-Markin, who he says often makes collaboration difficult despite their otherwise cordial relationship.
“I have a very good relationship with him, but sometimes I find it very difficult to take the excess,” Ahiafor remarked. “I am one particular person who will not agree on one thing with you, and after a few minutes or a few hours, you behave as if that was not what we had agreed upon. It pisses me off.”
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Ahiafor’s comments came after tensions between the minority leadership and the Clerk of the Appointments Committee, Gifty Jiagge-Gobah, had escalated.
Afenyo-Markin and his party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), have accused the Clerk of partisanship and bias, alleging that this has disrupted recent vetting proceedings. However, Ahiafor rejected these claims, insisting that the clerk operates in a transparent and fair manner.
“There is nothing that the Clerk of the Committee has put out there that we have not agreed upon,” Ahiafor said. He went on to address specific accusations regarding the clerk’s handling of reports, stating, “There is no occasion that the clerk will not give me and the minority leader a draft report. Even if you go back to recap, there are instances where the two of us will be sitting down there, and the clerk will hold two reports and give me one, giving him one in full glare of the camera. So I don’t know why he is alleging that he hasn’t been given reports.”
In addition to defending the Clerk, Ahiafor suggested that Afenyo-Markin’s confrontational approach might be linked to his previous role as Majority Leader. According to Ahiafor, this experience has made it harder for Afenyo-Markin to adapt to the dynamics of opposition leadership.
“It’s about time he realises that he is no longer Majority Leader, but he’s a Minority Leader. He can use any adjectives to describe himself—mighty and happy minority—but for me, he is a minority leader,” Ahiafor said.
Ahiafor also addressed parliamentary procedure, emphasising that clerks are expected to take instructions from committee chairpersons, not ranking members like Afenyo-Markin. “It doesn’t look like he’s the only one that is that way. Majority Leaders and Chairmen of Committees give information and take decisions from the Clerk, but by our practice, Clerks of Committees don’t take decisions from the Ranking Member.”
“They take decisions from the Chairman of the Committee. That is why their letters mostly read, ‘I have been directed by the Chairman of the Committee,’ not the Ranking Member,” he explained, underscoring the difference between the roles of Majority Leader and Minority Leader.
He further remarked that Afenyo-Markin’s stance may stem from a failure to fully adjust to the shift from the majority to the minority, noting that sometimes the minority leader “forgets himself” and struggles to operate from the minority’s perspective.
With tensions between the minority leadership and the Clerk of the Appointments Committee continuing to simmer, it remains to be seen whether these internal disagreements will affect the committee’s operations and overall parliamentary productivity.
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