{"id":237440,"date":"2016-08-08T07:48:00","date_gmt":"2016-08-08T07:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=237440"},"modified":"2016-08-08T07:48:00","modified_gmt":"2016-08-08T07:48:00","slug":"parliaments-handling-of-oti-bless-nomination-saga-a-joke-acepa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=237440","title":{"rendered":"Parliament&#8217;s handling of Oti Bless&#8217; nomination saga a &#8216;joke&#8217; &#8211; ACEPA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The African Centre for Parliamentary Affairs (ACEPA) has described Parliament\u2019s handling of the Oti Bless nomination saga as a joke.<\/p>\n<p>After being vetted by Parliaments\u2019 appointment committee, it emerged that the Deputy Minister for Local Government designate, John Oti Bless was part of the panel on Montie FM who threatened the lives of the Chief Justice and other Supreme Court justices.<\/p>\n<p>[contextly_sidebar id=&#8221;0hsGATunCKZwoDFW4DhSduoShuD4DbMA&#8221;]The Nkwanta North MP subsequently apologised to the judiciary after intense pressure from Parliament.<\/p>\n<p>Oti Bless\u2019 <a href=\"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2016\/08\/05\/oti-bless-apologises-to-his-mother-chief-justice\/\"><span style=\"color: #666699;\"><strong>apology on Friday\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/a>followed a directive from the Speaker for deliberations over his nomination to be put on hold until he apologised for the comments he made.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wish to sincerely state that I am really sorry for everything that has happened. Let me use this opportunity to render an unqualified apology to the Chief Justice who is my mother and the entire Judiciary, judges, Parliament, good people of Ghana and my constituents,\u201d he said in an interview with Eyewitness News host Richard Dela Sky.<\/p>\n<p>Oti Bless stated that\u00a0he had received advice from the Speaker of Parliament and the Majority leader, Alban Bagbin, prompting him to issue the public apology.<\/p>\n<p>But speaking to Citi News\u2019 Duke Mensah Opoku, the Executive Director of ACEPA, Dr. Rasheed Draman said Parliament should simply reject Oti Bless because his comments show he lacks the conscience to be a Deputy Minister.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis issue centres on the conscience of our members of Parliament. I think Parliament has no business approving the appointment of this gentleman. Our members of Parliament should go back and search their conscience and think carefully about this because the comments that are attributed to him are very dangerous comments. I think the apology doesn\u2019t matter. The person that is being appointed has to demonstrate a high level of accountability in terms of action. It is just a joke.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Draman&#8217;s comment comes days after the\u00a0President of Imani Ghana, Franklin\u00a0Cudjoe<a href=\"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2016\/08\/07\/jail-oti-bless-for-attack-on-cj-franklin-cudjoe\/\"><span style=\"color: #666699;\"><strong> called for the incarceration<\/strong> <\/span><\/a>of Oti Bless, over derogatory comments he made about the Chief\u00a0Justices and other justices of the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n<p>According to him, Oti Bless has not shown remorse for his comments.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>By: Marian Ansah\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The African Centre for Parliamentary Affairs (ACEPA) has described Parliament\u2019s handling of the Oti Bless nomination saga as a joke. After being vetted by Parliaments\u2019 appointment committee, it emerged that the Deputy Minister for Local Government designate, John Oti Bless was part of the panel on Montie FM who threatened the lives of the Chief [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":233689,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-slider-1","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=237440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/233689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=237440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=237440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=237440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}