The Chairman of the Appointments Committee, Bernard Ahiafor, says while he maintains a good working relationship with Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin, he often struggles with what he describes as the latter’s “excesses.”

Speaking on Joy News’ PM Express on Monday, February 3, the Akatsi South MP expressed frustration with his Effutu colleague’s approach to committee matters, particularly his tendency to backtrack on agreed decisions.

“I have a very good relationship with him, but sometimes I find it very difficult to take the excess,” the First Deputy Speaker of Parliament admitted.

“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 agreed upon. It pisses me off.”

He dismissed Mr Afenyo-Markin’s claims that the Clerk of the Appointments Committee had been partisan or had withheld reports from him, emphasising that all committee members, including the Minority Leader, receive the necessary documents.

“There is nothing that the clerk of the committee has put out there that we have not agreed upon. There is no occasion that the clerk will not give me and give 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, and the clerk will hold two reports, give me one, and give him one—in the full glare of the camera,” Ahiafor explained.

He suggested that Mr Afenyo-Markin’s background as a former Majority Leader may be influencing his expectations and approach to leadership in his current role as Minority Leader.

“It’s about time for him to realise that he is no longer the Majority Leader, but he’s a Minority Leader. He can use any adjectives to describe himself—mighty, happy, whatever—but for me, he is in the minority,” Mr Ahiafor stated.

“It doesn’t look like he understands that, and sometimes I believe he forgets himself.”

Bernard Ahiafor also clarified that, by parliamentary practice, committee clerks do not take directives from the Ranking Member but from the Chairman of the Committee.

“By our practice, clerks of the committee 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.

"But because he is coming from the Majority point of view, I think he sometimes forgets himself and fails to realise that he is now in the Minority,” he emphasized.