Adwoa Safo And The E-levy
Adwoa Safo, the hero for Ghanaians or the villain for NPP
Adwoa Safo may be the reason Townhall Meetings must happen
NPP can not force Adwoa Safo from parliament
Did government allegedly bribe Adwoa Safo to come home or did she request the alleged Ghc120,000
Can the NPP win the Dome-Kwabenya seat if Adwoa Safo is removed?
Ghana as we were told by various people affiliated with the government needs financial breathing urgently or it would suffocate. As the finance minister, Ken Offori Atta put it months ago, Ghana may collapse without the E-levy.
Before then, government officials alleged either Ghanaians accept E-levy or Ghana signed up for an IMF program. Now, the e-levy is quoted to solve almost all of Ghana’s problems including non-financial problems like issues of accountability, as the finance minister urged Ghanaians to accept the E-levy to have the right to demand accountability from government officials.
In the midst of the inability of government through parliament to pass the dreaded e-levy tax, Ghanaians were told town hall meetings were necessary to seek consensus for the tax that was claimed to have the ability to take Ghana out of its financial ditch.
Interestedly, before the town hall meetings across the regions were over, accusing fingers were being pointed at the MP for Dome-Kwabenya, Hon. Adwoa Safo, for being the reason the E-levy could not be passed by parliament. 4
In the accusations were alleged demands to be made deputy majority leader in the house as asserted by a fellow MP and ex-husband Hon. Kennedy Agyepong.
The MP and business mogul also claimed he took Ghc120,000.00 from the presidency to deposit into the ex-wife’s Fidelity bank account to aid her move back to the country from abroad.
What is not clear is whether that Ghc120,000.00 was part of demands from Adwoa Safo or it was a bribe paid to her by the government especially when her trip abroad was alleged not to be an official trip.
It is however not clear the strategy government is trying to use to convince the populace to accept the E-levy to avoid the financial disaster that may arise in its absence. Government officials are claiming the absence of Adwoa Safo’s is the reason the electronic tax is not yet passed and yet government machinery is still going around to conduct their town hall meetings.
Other party MPs and party executives are threatening the removal of Adwoa Safo from the NPP party to pave way for her removal from parliament and a subsequent by-election to be conducted in the Dome-kwabenya constituency.
Interestingly, opposition MPs like Mutarla Mohamed rather issued a counter-coup attempt on Adwoa Safo claiming they would not support any attempt to remove the MP from parliament since the constitution require two-thirds of MPs to vote in favour of any such removal from parliament.
The NPP governing has just about half of the total MPs (137) short of the required proportion needed for an assured/whipped effect. What is not clear also is whether NPP can win Adwoa Safo’s seat if she is removed from parliament.
READ: Mahama writes a letter to Teacher Unions on government’s E-levy Town-Hall Meetings
Per the status of the E-levy and the posture of government on the actual reason the E-levy could not be passed now, presents Adwoa Safo as a hero to those who may not support the E-levy at all or in its current form. And Adwoa Safo is seeming a villain to the government and its officials as Kennedy Agyepong put it, ‘we are in opposition as a government