Parliament needs to clean its image – Majority Leader
The Majority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, has admitted that Ghana’s Parliament will need reforms to clean its dented image in the eyes of the public.
The Majority Leader, who has been representing the people of Suame in the last 24 years, said: “public perception about parliament and parliamentarians to what it is worth is not encouraging.”
Speaking on the last day of the 7th Parliament, he noted that the legislature needs some repair works on its image to restore the respect it deserves.
Over the years, Ghana’s Parliament has been seen as a rubber-stamping institution at the executive’s beck and call rather than playing the watchdog on the executive.
“The demand for greater accountability has significantly increased in recent times.
“The situation demands introspection into the way parliament works to determine areas that can be improved to ensure that parliament is more responsive to the needs and aspirations of the citizenry,” he told his peers as he recounted the success and challenges of the 7th Parliament.
But he had a panacea.
He said the Standing Orders of Parliament which provides the compass to guide the House’s work, needed to be revised.
“Undoubtedly, a reform that can restore public confidence and promote the image and dignity of our parliament is the review of our Standing Orders, “he said.
Attempted reforms
He recalled that the fourth (2005), fifth (2009), sixth (2012) parliaments made attempts to review the document but the process failed to yield results.
Although the seventh parliament also set up a 13-member committee chaired by the First Deputy Speaker, Joe Osei-Wusu, to review the document, it was also unable to do so because of what he described as a last-minute challenge to its work.
A vociferous voice on Parliamentary reforms, the Majority Leader had in the past called for the review of some Standing Orders of Parliament that restrict the independence of select committees to conduct their own investigations into matters of national interest without the approval of the House during recess.
He said per the current status quo of the legislature, if no referrals were made to Parliament during recess for an investigation to be carried out into issues such as the outbreak of diseases and scandalous corruption, no relevant committee could, on its own, act to prevent such issues from getting out of hand.
“If committees have the remit to do what is required of them to do without any referral, then we will see relevant committees, even in the recession period of Parliament, convening and converging to investigate scandalous issues such as what is happening at SSNIT and bring a report for the House to conduct further investigations,” he said.
Like most Parliaments in the past, the seventh parliament has been plagued with scandals and public confrontations.
But its lowest ebb was in July 2019 when an attempt by the House to initiate the construction of a new chamber triggered public anger.
The “#DropThatChamber” campaign was initiated on social media with the aim of mounting pressure on Parliament to discontinue a proposal to build a new 450-seater chamber for $200 million.
Many Ghanaians joined the social media campaign intended to mobilize about two million Ghanaians to march on the streets on July 13, 2019, to register their displeasure. The House, after sustained social media pressure, dropped the plans to construct the new Chamber indefinitely.
Selection of new ministers from Parliament
Turning his attention to the appointment of ministers and deputy ministers from Parliament, he said the practice over the years had crippled the work of the legislature.
He explained why the framers of the 1992 constitution decided to add that provision to the country’s supreme law.
“There were genuine fears for this constitutional amendment at the inception of the Fourth Republic. That amendment was supposed to stabilise the system considering the fact that the overthrow of the Third Republic was driven by disagreement among members of parliament of the ruling party and the executive of the same party.”
During the Limann administration, MPs of the ruling party rejected a budget submitted for approval. Officially, it was rejected by the lawmakers who described it as inimical to the national interest.
But some political historians hold the view that the decision was veiled.
They claimed that the MPs were peeved that their colleagues in government were better remunerated than the legislators who contested and won elections.
That constitutional crisis was cured by framers of the 1992 constitution who inserted a provision that the majority of the ministers must come from Parliament.
Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu believed it had its advantages. But it also had its crippling effect.
“There is no doubt that the constitutional amendment has served a useful purpose. However, it is becoming evident that the situation is undermining parliament’s ability to effectively hold the executive accountable,” he observed.