The Minority in Parliament says the President has demonstrated double standards after he appeared to be cozying up with a businessman Joseph Siaw Agyepong whose companies have been linked to several corruption scandals.
Expressing surprise, Deputy Minority Leader James Klutse Avedzi said the president must explain his percieved shift in his position after using Jospong-linked scandals to campaign about fighting corruption if elected.
President Akufo-Addo, branded ‘incorruptible’ during the campaign told Dr. Joseph Agyapong last Sunday “more grease to your elbows” after touring some of his facilities.
Nana Akufo-Addo remarked that ‘you have been the subject of controversies…it goes with the territory” and then laughed, adding “I know you are capable of handling the controversies”.
The Minority has stated that these comments confirm their long-held belief that the president was simply doing politics after he led his party to scream corruption when scandals like GYEEDA, SUBAH and SADA broke between 2013 and 2015.
In all these scandals, Jospong Group of Companies was heavily linked.
In 2015 while addressing students of the University of Cape Coast in the Central region, the NPP presidential candidate mentioned GYEEDA as one of the top three scandals.
Akufo-Addo said the ¢1.8 billion dissipated in these scandals is more than the $912million IMF bail-out the NDC government went for.
Processing the pre-election and post-election comments around Jospong Group, the Deputy Minority leader James Avedzi said;
“It means that all that he [Akufo-Addo] said in the past were all not true; he probably said all that because of politics”.
The Ketu North NDC MP said “the president will be the best person to explain why he has shifted from the position that he held previously against Jospong to a new position of praise”
“If Jospong was corrupt in the past is he prepared to work with a corrupt man?…is he now ready to partner and work with a corrupt man? Then you will also termed to be a corrupt person.”
The President set high standards for himself during the electioneering campaign with quotes like “I am not, have never been and will never be corrupt” circulated widely on social media.
His Jospong comments comes as the businessman’s subsidiaries are under fresh investigations in 2017 following investigative work by Joy News’ Manasseh Azure.
His exposé has revealed and catalogued questionable contracts with various metropolitan and municipal assemblies.
The report exposed how a waste bin contract awarded on sole sourcing basis to the JOSPONG Group was inflated by at least ¢130 million.
Another report revealed how a ¢98 million contract was awarded to 11 companies under the Jospong group to undertake fumigation exercise across the country when Zoomlion, the parent company of Jospong had already been paid to undertake the same fumigation.
All these reports led to the police starting an investigation into the claims.
Manasseh Azure who did these investigations has described the president’s comments on Jospong as an “immoral dance”.
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