The Office of the Speaker of Parliament has debunked a report by the pro-government tabloid, Daily Guide, that an Advisor to the Speaker, Mr Kofi Attor, has been appointed to act as Speaker in Bagbin’s absence.
In a statement issued Monday, March 14, 2022, the Speaker’s office asked the public to disregard the claims by the publication as it is one of many concoctions by the yellow paper.
The Daily Guide newspaper on Friday, March 11, 2022, had the headline “Bagbin Appoints NDC man as ‘Acting Speaker”.
“We wish to state that Hon. Kofi Attor is a former Member of Parliament who currently works in the Speaker’s Secretariat as a Senior Advisor. The Speaker assigns responsibility to him and the staff of his Secretariat from time to time. In all these, he has never been assigned responsibility as acting Speaker…”
The Speaker explained further: “In the instance under reference, Hon. Kofi Attor was assigned to receive a message, intended for the Speaker, from a delegation of Medicine Sans Frontiers, an international medical humanitarian organization.”
According to the Speaker, the assignment cannot make Mr Attor the acting Speaker of Parliament.
“It must be pointed out that the delegation was in Parliament primarily to meet with the leadership and the Health Committee of Parliament, which they did.
“The said publication is just one of the mischievous attempts to court public disaffection and ridicule for the Speaker and bring him into disrepute. The public is advised to ignore the mischief that was intended,” the statement said.
Daily Guide has lately been on the case of the Speaker, following Bagbin’s resistance to attempts by the Akufo-Addo Jubilee House and the Judiciary to de-fang Parliament so that the thievish e-levy can be railroaded through the House.
On Monday, the same paper also claimed that Bagbin had blown US$1.1million on travels to Dubai for medical health.
In a recent reaction, the Office of the Speaker wondered why the paper singled the speaker out for the self-imposed scrutineer reports to the neglect of the heads of other arms of government including the president and the Chief Justice.