“The President again came to this House with a familiar story; the usual lamentations. He packaged it in a language as though we have a new beginning. Mr. Speaker if the President has any concerns, his duty is to fix it,” the Minority Leader, Osahen Alexander Afenyo-Markin told Parliament soon after President Mahama had delivered the 2025 State of the Nation Address (SONA).
Afenyo-Markin accused President Mahama of deliberately ordering and supervising an era of mass termination of jobs, soon after he took office, yet turning round to complain of unemployment in his SONA to Parliament.
“President Mahama has today told us that we have 2.2 million Ghanaians unemployed. But what he has forgotten is that in his administration, in less than 100 days, all we know is ‘sack them, sack them, sack them, dismissal, dismissal, dismissal’.
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“Mr. Speaker, on the streets of Accra today, the youth of this country are saying that under Mahama, there have been a lot of terminations”, Afenyo-Markin noted
Afenyo-Markin continued: “The President again says that he has delivered less Ministers but it is clear that his strategy is if less, more divide, you have appointed less Ministers but more and more and more Presidential staffers
“Mr. Speaker, His Excellency the President has announced to us a Cabinet of 19 Ministers with only two women; the daughter of the founder of this NDC, Zenator Agyeman-Rawlings is missing, Hajia Lardi is missing, Helen Ntorsu is missing. Where are the women in this government?
“The vice President is part of the government and we are seeing only two women in Cabinet and the vice President is silent. In percentage terms, we have only 10 percent of women in Cabinet”, Afenyo-Markin critiqued.
While Afenyo-Markin was on his feet commenting on the SONA read out by President Mahama, the Speaker, Alban Bagbin, interrupted and told him: “Honourable Minority Leader, you have one more minute.”
The Minority Leader however protested: “I cannot be limited, Mr. Speaker. Let me finish,” and he continued his critique of the SONA read out by the President.
The Speaker after just about a minute interrupted again “Your time is up, Honourable Minority Leader,” and went ahead to .read out a list of guests present while the Majority Leader was still on his feet protesting that he had to be given time to conclude his comments.
