News:
June 8, 2023
A two term former member of Ghana’s delegation to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Parliament Fredrick Opare-Ansah is confident the Parliament will see its members being elected by universal adult suffrage in the near future.
According to him the sub-regional member states will achieve that and pointed out that the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) has shown the way by electing its members directly.
“It’s important because there are issues which are of community interest especially the direction we are heading right now, where because of the issues of ICT your borders are becoming almost nonsensical”.
He explained that with ICT and technology, one can seat in Togo, Nigeria or Burkina Faso and have an IP address in Ghana and do things as if the person is in Ghana.
And if the person is in Ghana and want to commit a crime in another sub-regional country, the person can easily do that, “so when you do not have a legislative body which has this kind of interest and dealing with the common issues it could pose a problem”.
Mr. Opare-Ansah further noted that European Union (EU) has been able to address some issues in that regard because of their strengthens and commonality of the laws, the EU Parliament has enacted laws to deal with that.
And recounted that whiles in the Community Parliament one of the things he pushed for which eventually got somewhere was the issue of roaming and added that going for a session in Abuja Nigeria one has to carry SIM cards – Glo along likewise other countries.
“We have eventually enacted laws and Ghana has done it, when I was chairman of the communications committee, we passed our laws here which enables me now to land in any of the ECOWAS countries to use my Ghana SIM card on the local networks and get charged what the citizens pay in a member states without going to pay roaming charges”.
As to whether this laudable idea is actually working in the member states of the West African sub-region, he responded by saying that it is important that all member states domesticate these laws after the protocols are signed by Authority of Heads of States and Governments at their summits.
“If Ghana’s president goes out and sign this in a summit and comes back and the Communications Minister in Ghana does not take it upon herself to come to Parliament with it to get a law enacted on it, how would telecommunications in Ghana work on this?” He queried.
He noted that it will only come back to the same point, if it does not get domesticated; adding that local networks would not comply until the domestic laws force them to do so; and Ghana has enacted a low to this effect. When you land in Ghana for 90 days you are free to make calls from a members states of ECOWAS and get charged as you pay back home.
He emphasized further that if the Community Parliament has its own remit and makes laws like EALA, it gets gazzeted and takes effect because automatically the member states domesticate laws made by the regional bloc.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com