News:
October 9, 2013
The Member of Parliament (MP) for Walewale in the Northern Region, Dr. Saagre Bambangi has told Citi News that Ghana’s Legislature is struggling to perform its oversight responsibility because “it is very, very, weak.”
“Parliament in my opinion is very, very weak. It has a weak capacity and so its oversight responsibility is questionable.”
Speaking to Citi News at a forum organized by the Africa Center for Economic Transformation (ACET) on ‘Good Governance in the Extractive Industry,’ Dr. Bambangi stated that “we really need to overhaul our institutions. I am a Member of Parliament and I have just been in Parliament for nine months and I have not seen the power of Parliament yet.”
According to him, the fusion between the executive and the legislature “must end. The fact that we have Ministers who are also Parliamentarians, that thing in my opinion is a very fundamental source of the weakness of Parliament.”
The Walewale MP also suggested government must adequately resource Parliament saying, “in the opinion of one of the MPs, Parliament is broke. Yes, Parliament is broke and if Parliament is broke, how can it function?
“Parliament has to rely on the Ministries, some other agencies to fund them to exercise oversight responsibilities over those institutions. Does it make sense? Parliament is weak; some other institutions are also weak, it’s only the Executive that is powerful in this country and that should be checked,” he added.
In a related development, a research fellow at the Center for Democratic Development (CDD), Victor Brobbey also indicated that the dominant power of the executive arm of government has weakened the powers of the Legislature to effectively oversee government receipt and expenditure.
“Parliament is created as the supreme law making authority, ostensibly with oversight over our government expenditure but in practice has very little capacity to really do efficient public financial oversight.”
Mr. Brobbey pointed out that the constitutional structure of Ghana, “Parliament cannot really do effective oversight of government receipts and expenditure from all the sectors.”
This he said breeds “corruption, you’d get challenges with the enforcements of even things as basic as environmental governance standards.”
citifmonline.com