The Chairman of the Appointments Committee, Bernard Ahiafor, has emphasised that Alban Kingsford Sumana Bagbin has the legal authority to suspend any Member of Parliament who violates the law.
His remarks follow the suspension of four MPs who were caught up in the Appointment Committee brawl on Thursday, January 30, 2025.
Speaking in an interview, Mr. Ahiafor justified that Standing Orders 5, (120), and (130) thereabout give the Speaker the authority to suspend an MP or any other person in the Chamber.
He also clarified that legislators work for only four days a week; therefore, the two-week suspension amounts to eight days.
He made this clarification to address the concerns of some former MPs accusing Bagbin of exceeding the number of suspension days, which is supposed to be only eight days and not two weeks.
“A Committee chair is more or less like the Speaker. There’s nothing a Committee chair can have that a Speaker doesn’t have.
“Now if you listen to the Speaker’s statement carefully, his decision was informed by the fact that the issue happened in Parliament because the Committee sitting is a Parliamentary sitting, so the thing is as if it happened in Parliament.
“So as a Speaker of Parliament, he has taken a decision that those people should be suspended.
“People are saying the suspension should be 8 days instead of two weeks.
“By our rules, Parliament doesn’t normally sit on Mondays. The sitting is Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, so we have 4 days sitting in a week, and the two weeks will be 8 days,” he clarified.
He added, “Standing Orders 5, (120), (130) thereabout give the Speaker the authority to suspend an MP. And it can happen to anyone in Parliament”.
The suspended MPs are Frank Annoh-Dompreh (MP for Nsawam-Adoagyiri), Alhassan Tampuli Sulemana (MP for Gushegu), Jerry Ahmed Shaib (MP for Weija-Gbawe), and Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor (MP for South Dayi).