News:
August 3, 2020
Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Osei-Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu has noted that his Ministry has justified its place in the arena of governance hence the re-instatement of the Ministry by President Nana Akufo-Addo’s administration.
According to him, between 2009 and 2016 there was an imposed hiatus by the two previous administrations on the Ministry based on rather proven untenable reasons that disrupted work of the Ministry for eight years.
There has been fruitful engagement with different segments of Parliament ranging from leadership of the House, Committee chairpersons, ranking members, MPs to members of the Parliamentary Press Corps.
He singled out the support the Ministry had enjoyed from the Minority Leader, the first Deputy Speaker, Chairman of the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee and his ranking and lamented over the inability of the two to be part of the next parliament.
The leader of Government business made these remarks at the opening of the Ministry’s engagement with the expanded leadership of the House on the theme, “The committee system in Ghana’s Parliament an assessment”.
Mr. Osei-Kyei further lamented over the high attrition rate that must be of grave concern to the country’s fledging parliamentary democracy at heart. “After every term some of our finest legislators are peeled off should be troubling to all who believe in good democratic governance”.
And reiterated that the Ministry’s engagement with the chairs and ranking members of all the thirty one committees was aimed at deepening democratic governance in line with its 2020 strategic policy objective and priority areas of concentration of enabling effective interference between the Executive and the Legislature.
The Minister of Parliamentary Affairs lamented over the practice where some previous Speakers vetted motions and re-wrote them in a very watered down form and quoted order 72, which imply that the Speaker would be provided with the motions and statement which a member intend to make.
Despite the order 66 making the speaker the sole judge to admit statement and motions, the speakers power to alter these documents has to do with only urgent statements, only when the question asked infringes on order 67 (1), he added.
Again, another avenue open to lawmakers to put their cases across is the media engagement when time does not permit for them to put their issues across on the floor of the House, to put government on the carpet and demand response from government.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com