Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, a private legal practitioner and a leading member of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) has slammed pensioners picketing at the Finance Ministry over the domestic debt exchange programme.
He said the action is not needed because the controversial debt exchange programme is voluntary.
In a series of tweets, Mr. Otchere-Darko said the time to sign up for the programme has expired so there’s no need.
“Why picket over something you don’t like (the improved offer) when you have the right not to sign up? Sorry, but I struggle to get her emotional outburst over exemption! I hope she won’t volunteer to picket tomorrow and on the same issues when the time to sign up has expired.”
He added, “The former chief justice Sophia Akuffo may mean well but she erred big time in her basic appreciation of the issues. Rather than asking the Govt for exemption at this late hour, why did she simply not ‘exempt’ herself from exchanging her original bond for the new one.”
“While I have sympathies for those picketing, I think we should be bold enough to ask them what really is the purpose? Why picket over an offer which you have the liberty not to accept? You are asking to be exempted but from an improved offer programme which is voluntary,” Otchere-Darko added.
“For a former CJ to take up a noble cause such as she did but at such late hour when all was done and for all that publicity, she owed it to herself and her social standing to have understood the issues far better than what she exhibited last Friday. She is bigger than that.”
The former chief justice Sophia Akuffo on Friday (10 February) joined a picket line of pensioners who have been staging protests at the Ministry of Finance, demanding that the government exempt them from the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP).
The former chief justice brandished a placard in solidarity with other senior citizens.
“We use our bond yields to pay our rents, medical bills, electricity bills and water bills,” the placard she wielded said.
The former chief justice described as wicked and insensitive the decision by the Finance Ministry to include bonds of pensioners in the programme.
