Month: January 2021

The Speaker of the 8th Parliament of the 4th Republic, Alban Bagbin has assured the august House that he will be fair and impartial in the discharge of his duties in his new role.

“I intend to live by the Oath I swore on the occasion of my election to this office, to respect, obey, and abide by the will of the House. I am fully committed to being fair and impartial. But I am also fully committed to being firm,” he stated.

Addressing the second sitting of the 8th parliament, Mr. Bagbin reiterated that there is no NPP Speaker or NDC Speaker; there is only a Speaker of the Parliament of Ghana.

“While past practice might lead some to think otherwise, the truth of the matter is that the Speakership is not a partisan-political office. Regardless of which party nominated or voted to elect him or her, and regardless of his or her previous political background, the Speaker of the Parliament of Ghana occupies a nonpartisan, impartial office.”

Adding that the independence and impartiality of the Speaker is particularly evident from one line in the Speaker’s Oath, which cannot be found in the Presidential Oath, the Oath of Vice-President, the Oath for Ministers of State and Cabinet, or the Oath of a Member of Parliament; and reads: “And I will do right to all manner of persons in accordance with the Constitution and the laws and conventions of Parliament without fear or favor, affection or ill will.”

The speaker called on members to be respectful, and abide by his rulings and instructions. “When in disagreement, the Standing Orders of the House, has the answer. I will apply the authority of the House as symbolized by the Mace, to protect and defend the prerogatives, privileges, and immunities of Parliament, members, and staff as provided under the laws of the country”, he assured.

Dominic Shirimori/Ghanamps.com

Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin on Friday, 15 January, 2020 confirmed the New Patriotic Party (NPP) caucus as the Majority group in Parliament.
Following a letter he received from the Independent Member of Parliament (MP) for Fomena, Andrew Asiamah Amoako.
The Fomena MP indicated in his letter to the Speaker, which was read out to the House, that he would do business with the NPP.
Speaker Bagbin noted that the outcome of the December polls in which the people denied both parties a single party control of the legislative branch is a call to chart a new path in the conduct of the business of Parliament.
He said, “the people of Ghana sent a loud and clear message to the political class when they voted to deny both the New Patriotic Party NPP for short and the National Democratic Congress, NDC single party control of the legislative branch.

“The score of 137 for NPP and 137 for NDC with 1 independent, the decision of no majority party and no minority party in parliament, is a call for us to chart a new path to embark on new ways of transacting Parliamentary business.”
Mr Bagbin however urged both sides of the house to work on any challenges that might prevent the smooth running of business during proceedings.
“I urge the leadership of both sides of the house to put their heads together to smoothen out any bottlenecks or challenges that may impede the conduct of business in the house. I am ever ready to assist in this direction.”
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com

 

The jubilation from the New Patriotic Party caucus that greeted the declaration of the New Patriotic Party and the Independent Formena Member of Parliament as the Majority group on the first sitting of the 8th Parliament on Friday, January 15, 2021 was short-lived with further explanations from the Speaker.

The NPP caucus was seen in a jubilant mood with many of them waving white handkerchiefs to signify victory when the Speaker made the announcement.

However, before proceedings came to a halt for the day, Haruna Iddrisu, leader of the National Democratic Congress called the attention of the Speaker to clarify his position on his declaration with both parties having the same numerical strength.

This, the speaker clarified saying, “I haven’t said that the NPP has a majority in Parliament, I said with the Association of the independent candidate, they have a majority group. No part has a majority in Parliament.

He assured the house that time will tell and bring clarity to which side has the majority in the house, as some MPs would have to wait to know their full status with the cases at the courts.

Dominic Shirimori/Ghanamps.com

The Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin has assured that the 8th Parliament would live to the true and core mandate and mission of Parliament.
He warned that he will not yield to pressure from any group or individual to make Parliament a ‘rubber stamp’ or obstructive body.
“As the foremost accountability institution in our constitutional system, Parliament’s role is to check-and-balance the Executive, not to obstruct or rubber stamp the Executive’s agenda. Parliament does its job, as it must, when it questions, investigates, reviews, and scrutinizes the Executive, its bills, its nominations, and its proposed agreements, and then proceeds to approve, to amend, or to reject them, as the case may be.”
Addressing the first sitting of the 8th Parliament on Friday, the speaker noted that there appears to be some amount of confusion and misunderstanding as to what the appropriate role of Parliament is in our constitutional system, particularly because of the winner-take-all politics.

That is to say that whenever Parliament is dominated by the same party that holds the Presidency and forms the Government, the common perception and expectation is that Parliament will automatically support the Government’s agenda, without regard to its merits, simply put, ” Government is entitled to have its way in Parliament.”
As such the current situation when neither of the parties has a majority nor minority in parliament is creating some uncertainty among the public with regards to their works.
However, “regardless of which party has the upper hand in the House, it would be wrong to see Parliament’s role as either obstructing or rubberstamping Government’s agenda. Parliament cannot discharge any one of its core mandates–deliberative, legislative, financial control, oversight, and representational–by being either obstructionist or a rubber stamp”, the Speaker noted.
The Speaker cited instances in the first parliament of the 4th Republic when Parliament played its role precisely despite not having a real opposition party. “Bills proposed by the Executive were not accorded routine, rubber-stamp treatment; they were subjected to close review, scrutiny, and modification, where necessary. A case in point is the bill that later became the law criminalizing “Causing Financial Loss to the State.” When it was introduced in the First Parliament, the bill as drafted had no “mens rea” requirement; it would have made “causing financial loss to the State” a strict liability offence. I recall, and the Hansard record will show, that the amendment to add the word “willfully” to the law came from the floor of the House.”
And added that with its almost total control of the House, the dominant Party at the time could have simply rubber-stamped the bill; but it did not.
Dominic Shirimori/Ghanadistricts.com

President of the Community Court of Justice, Justice Edward Amoako Asante has said the institution had to invest significant portion of its resources in virtual technology with the first virtual session of the court held on Monday, June 22, 2020 due to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

According to him the initial disruption on the conduct of the court session affected sixty cases which had been scheduled for both hearing and judgment. It was imperative to migrate to virtual technology infrastructure in other to continue discharging their roles, he added.

And as part of the process for deploying the virtual technology, the Court had to align its Practice Direction with the new reality with the concomitant benefits of ensuring the safety of judges and staff.
In his goodwill message to the Second Extra Ordinary Session of the Community Parliament, he noted that although fallout of a pandemic, the deployment of the technology and the new practice direction had other benefits.

They had uninterrupted Court sessions and Court related operations despite the outbreak of Covid-19 Pandemic; improvement in turnaround time for Court hearings; general improvement in the management of case files; recording of sittings and the speedy delivery of judgments.

This project enabled the Court to fully function in 2020 despite the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. It helped saved legal costs consisting of travel air tickets of litigants, agents, lawyers and witnesses as well as logistics and hotel costs. Benefits of no personal contacts between the bench and the lawyers, agent’s litigants and witnesses with the attendant infectious risks.

President of the Community court further added that, the court undertook training of judges and key staff members, and invested three hundred and forty-five thousand one hundred and twenty-six dollars in the purchase and installation of video conference equipment, fourteen laptops and accessories including servers, routers, switches, backup solutions, wireless access point, installation of SOPHO S Firewall and anti-virus solutions, Microsoft 365 used by all ECOWAS intuitions and increased internet bandwidth.

One of the implications of the deployment of this technology was that the effective functioning of the Court was dependent of the quantum and quality of the IT support staff. Until recently, the Court had to rely on contract staff to provide the IT support for its activities whose appointments have thankfully been regularized.

However, leveraging the full potentials of the technology for the benefit of the Court, Member States and Community citizens will require reinforcing the inadequate IT capacity of the Court for the effective management of the substantial Community investment in the virtual technology infrastructure.

Since this session of Parliament is dedicated to among other things, the consideration of the budget of the Community as approved by the last Administration and Finance Commission meeting, “I am constrained to seek the understanding and support of our valued parliamentarians to the proposal by the Court to address this deficiency”, he stated.

Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com