Dr Rasheed Draman, the executive director of the Africa Centre for Parliamentary Affairs (ACEPA) has described the tension in Ghana’s Parliament as very sad and worrying.
It comes after the Speaker of Parliament Alban Bagbin took a swipe at his first deputy Joseph Osei-Owusu for consistently overturning his rulings.
“It’s very sad, because what we are seeing is that, it looks like the division between the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) is spilling into the office of the Speaker. And here when I say office of the Speaker, I am talking about the Speaker and his two deputies, so that is quite sad,” Draman told The Asaase Breakfast Show on Thursday (24 February).
“I have never seen this in any Parliament in our continent. The parties can disagree but usually the Speaker and his deputies are usually united, and if you go to some of our neighbouring countries, they have about five or six deputy speakers. You don’t have this kind of confusion we have,” he said in conversation with Kwaku Nhyira-Addo.
“That office is the institution of our Republic, and its sanctity must be protected, so that we don’t set a very bad precedence. Maybe in future we might have somebody who is from the other side and then you know, some of this could be cited as precedence that happened in the eighth Parliament and that gives justification for other people to do something else,” Draman said.
GhanaFeed.com
