To ensure that Parliament plays the roles assigned to it by the Constitution, the Speaker of the newly-inaugurated 8th Parliament, Rt. Hon. Alban S.K. Bagbin, has indicated that he would not yield to pressure from any quarter to allow the august house be turned into a rubber stamp or an obstructer.
“As Speaker, I will not yield to pressure from any quarter to allow this august House to be turned into a rubber stamp or an obstructer.”
Speaker Bagbin’s comment comes as a response to views and worries expressed by some Ghanaians as to how the 8th Parliament would collaborate to work with the government, since there was no majority and minority, and the Speaker was not from the government in power.
Mr Bagbin, who was addressing members of Parliament, the media and the public who gathered at the First Sitting of the 8th Parliament last Friday, indicated that such worries and concerns are needless, as it was based on an incorrect view of what Parliament’s role was and has been in the Fourth Republic.
He stated that regardless of which party had the upper hand in the House, it would be wrong to see Parliament’s role as either obstructing or rubber-stamping government’s agenda.
“No Majority Party and no Minority Party, and of a Speaker who is not beholden to or endorsed by the President, is causing many of our citizens, both in and out of government, including in this House, a great deal of consternation. To them, if government is not guaranteed its way in a Parliament, then such a Parliament can only be obstructionist.
“Hon Members, this concern is needless, as it is based on an incorrect view of what this Parliament’s role is, and, indeed, what its role has been in the Fourth Republic. Regardless of which party has the upper hand in the House, it would be wrong to see Parliament’s role as either obstructing or rubber-stamping government’s agenda.”
He opined that Parliament cannot discharge any one of its core mandates – deliberative, legislative, financial control, oversight, and representational – by being either obstructionist or a rubber stamp.
Mr Bagbin elucidated that Parliament was the foremost accountability institution in our constitutional system, and its 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 scrutinises 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,” the Speaker said.
Recounting his experiences as one who comes to the Speakership with the longest record of previous service as a Member of this House, Mr Bagbin said that in the First Parliament, when the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP’s) boycott of the 1992 Parliamentary Elections left the House with no 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.”
He said a case in point was the bill that later became the law criminalising “Causing Financial Loss to the State.” When it was introduced in the First Parliament, the bill, as drafted, had no “mens rea” requirement and would have made “Causing Financial Loss to the State” a strict liability offence. “I recall that the amendment to add the word “willfully” to the law came from the floor of the House. With the ruling government’s almost total control of the House, the bill could have been simply rubber-stamped, but that wasn’t the case.”
Another instance the Speaker gave, was the refusal of the House to consider and approve the nomination of a Court of Appeal Judge to be appointed as Justice of the Supreme Court.
Mr Bagbin, based on these instances and explanations, asked the House not to worry its head over the current structure, since that would not dictate how business would be conducted in the House.
He pledged to let cooperation, dialogue, accommodation, and consensus building be the guiding principles of the 8th Parliament, and asked his colleagues to do same.
The post Parliament neither obstructionist nor rubber stamp -Speaker Bagbin appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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