Deputy Majority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, has described as insincere the recent call from the Minority for the removal and subsequent prosecution of the Health Minister, Kwaku Agyeman Manu.

According to him, the Minister’s actions, though it did breach Article 181 of the 1992 Constitution, it did not, in any way, cause financial loss to the state, thus should not give rise to calls for removal and prosecution.

Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express, Afenyo-Markin stated that “It became obvious to us throughout our deliberation that certain funds had been paid to Al Makhtoum of which certain doses of vaccines had not been received at the time Makhtoum breached the agreement.

“So our main concern was how to get the funds back. Fortunately for us, we were shown evidence of communication between the two parties and before we could finish our report, the funds had been sent back to government of Ghana, so there was no financial loss to the state. To me, that was critical.”

He further added that “Agyeman Manu explained to us. He acted in accordance with the exigency of the time. There were high death rates, he needed to save lives, but soon thereafter he engaged the AG – he wrote to the AG.

“It is not as if the Parliament wrote to the AG for opinion, he himself wrote to the AG and said that this is the agreement, this is what he’s signing he wants his opinion, whether he needs to come to Parliament. And he told us, and he’s on record to have said that having received AG’s report, advice, he was preparing a memo to parliament. He conceded.”

The Effutu MP also noted that the claim that the Minister had perjured the Committee probing the Sputnik V deal was misleading.

According to him, at the end of the Committee’s sitting that matter had been straightened out, with Committee members from the NDC side conceding that the Minister had done no such thing.

“We played the tape. It became a thorny issue, back and forth between my good self and my other colleagues from the other side. So the Majority Leader asked the clerks to call for the tape, we listened to it together and they came to a conclusion that the view held by them was not correct,” he said.

He was thus surprised the Minority side, including those who were on the Committee would begin to instigate the removal and prosecution of the Health Minister.

“We are doing politics, but let’s do it with some honour. On this report, and the conduct of the NDC, permit me to go by Shakespeare’s view in Macbeth that had I but died an hour before this chance I would have lived a blessed life far from this instant, there’s nothing serious in mortality. I say this to them. I say this to the NDC.

“For them to turn round and say this about Agyeman Manu is most insincere with the greatest respect. So had I but died before this chance I would have lived a blessed life far from this instant. I end it there,” he said.

Concerning consequences for the Health Minister’s action, Afenyo-Markin stated that “In our report we said in future they have to engage. The question is, is it a criminal offence to sin against Article 181 where there is no financial loss to the state?

“Our laws do not say that when you sin against Article 181 and it does not result in financial loss to the state you must be held criminally liable.”