December 3
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Inside DEC 1, 2018 .qxp_Layout 1 11/30/18 9:47 PM Page 5<br />
06<br />
News DAILY<br />
HERITAGE MONDAY DECEMBER 3, 2018<br />
Parliament is half-empty<br />
as we see it on TV<br />
BY NANA BRAM OKAE II<br />
IT APPEARS Parliament of<br />
Ghana is short-changing<br />
the people of Ghana in a<br />
number of ways. Anytime<br />
there is a story in the media<br />
concerning the august<br />
house of Parliament accompanied<br />
by a video clip on Television,<br />
we see several empty seats<br />
giving the impression that absenteeism<br />
is very high in the House.<br />
Full-time job<br />
But you see, being a Member<br />
of Parliament (MP) is a full-time<br />
job, not a part-time job. We elect<br />
MPs to do a full-time job on our<br />
behalf by making laws and to put<br />
the executive arm of governance<br />
on its toes as well.<br />
Regrettably, we see many slips<br />
in the work of MPs and many<br />
concerned and patriotic citizens<br />
are calling on them to be up and<br />
doing to satisfy the needs and<br />
concerns of Ghanaians.<br />
For instance, the law setting<br />
up the National Identification<br />
Authority is problematic and it’s<br />
so because the august house<br />
didn’t look at it critically at the<br />
time they were considering it.<br />
That’s not the only one.<br />
Agreements with power producers<br />
are said to be detrimental to<br />
the republic because much care<br />
was not taken when they were<br />
being scrutinized.<br />
NDC MPs<br />
Now, a section of MPs, particularly<br />
from the NDC side are<br />
kicking against the use of the law<br />
that Parliament crafted to be used<br />
by the NIA to register Ghanaians.<br />
What is this? Is it the<br />
proverbial double standards or<br />
what?<br />
Ladies and gentlemen, I’m not<br />
sure why we see empty seats in<br />
the august house when the TV<br />
cameras move there. It may be<br />
because some Parliamentarians<br />
are at committee meetings or<br />
doing some other things related<br />
to their work in the building.<br />
However, that is not how it<br />
should be. At every meeting in<br />
the august house, there should be<br />
a quorum before business starts.<br />
This is mandatory and not optional.<br />
Lack of quorum renders any<br />
•Parliament House<br />
decision taken by MPs null and<br />
void for which reason the<br />
Speaker must at all times be notified<br />
if there is no quorum for<br />
him to stop proceedings till there<br />
is quorum.<br />
Quorum should be 1/3 of all<br />
MPs put together and if we do<br />
the arithmetic we will get an answer<br />
of 91.<br />
This means that at every sitting<br />
of Parliament we should not<br />
get fewer than 91 MPs sitting in<br />
and contributing meaningfully.<br />
Unfortunately, this is not the case<br />
on several occasions.<br />
Hansard<br />
We can even check from the<br />
Hansard, the official record of<br />
proceedings in Parliament to verify<br />
who were present and who<br />
were not present at different<br />
times of sitting.<br />
This may be<br />
very easy to do<br />
You may<br />
recollect that<br />
not long ago a<br />
civil society<br />
grouping came<br />
out to catalogue<br />
MPs who are<br />
habitually absent<br />
in the<br />
house and number<br />
one on the<br />
list is the Education<br />
Minister.<br />
They say the<br />
reason for his<br />
habitual absence<br />
may be<br />
due to his other<br />
duties as a minister.<br />
That is not good enough excuse<br />
to be habitually absent in<br />
Parliament. You notice that every<br />
MP is a full-time law maker in<br />
Parliament where he owes his allegiance<br />
first and foremost.<br />
If for one reason or the other<br />
an MP is made a minister or<br />
deputy minister, he should combine<br />
both duties very effectively<br />
as they do in the UK whose parliamentary<br />
practices we seek to<br />
copy line, hook and sinker.<br />
UK Ministers<br />
For your information, in the<br />
UK, all ministers are MPs and<br />
they don’t absent themselves<br />
from Parliament like our ministers<br />
and deputy ministers do here<br />
with pomposity and glee.<br />
Our Parliament has enormous<br />
powers but we don’t see them<br />
carry out those responsibilities.<br />
The Privileges Committee for instance,<br />
is as powerful as the High<br />
Court of Ghana and yet they fail<br />
The ‘wee-smoker-cum rapper’<br />
Blakk Rasta who said ‘MPs<br />
also smoke wee’, was also<br />
hauled before the Privileges<br />
Committee and they ‘twisted’<br />
his arm so much that he was<br />
literarily compelled to say, ‘I<br />
was on heat’ (whatever that<br />
means) when he made the remark<br />
about the Parliamentarians.<br />
to bite.<br />
A few years ago, several Members<br />
of Parliament were ‘outraged’<br />
by a statement made by<br />
Prof. Stephen Adei when he was<br />
invited to be the guest speaker at<br />
a school function in Accra.<br />
Prof. Adei had something<br />
scathing to say about the MPs<br />
and those of them who were not<br />
enthused about that vowed to<br />
haul him before the Privileges<br />
Committee to explain what he<br />
meant.<br />
Happiness<br />
I was beside myself with happiness<br />
then when the threat was<br />
issued by the MPs because it<br />
would be a real showdown between<br />
them and Prof Adei and I<br />
looked forward to it. But there<br />
was no show after all; the MPs<br />
were not brave enough to haul<br />
Prof Adei before the Privileges<br />
Committee.<br />
Which is very interesting! Professor<br />
Dodoo, then of<br />
the Medical School at<br />
Korle Bu had earlier<br />
been hauled before the<br />
Privileges Committee<br />
and made to swallow his<br />
words after saying<br />
something deemed unpalatable<br />
by the MPs.<br />
The ‘wee-smokercum<br />
rapper’ Blakk Rasta<br />
who said ‘MPs also<br />
smoke wee’, was also<br />
hauled before the Privileges<br />
Committee and<br />
they ‘twisted’ his arm so<br />
much that he was literarily<br />
compelled to say, ‘I<br />
was on heat’ (whatever<br />
that means) when he<br />
made the remark about<br />
the Parliamentarians.<br />
Prof. Stephen Adei<br />
What did Prof. Stephen Adei<br />
say about MPs at the function?<br />
He said when you pick ten Members<br />
of Parliament and you dig<br />
deep, you will come to the realization<br />
that eight of them are<br />
thieves, ‘glorified thieves,’ as he<br />
put it.<br />
Prof. Badu Akosah has also<br />
on a few occasions, accused our<br />
MPs of under-hand dealings. He<br />
has said that as a former top government<br />
official having to work<br />
with MPs on a number of issues<br />
he could also say that not all MPs<br />
are honourable enough, going by<br />
their deeds. In effect, he agrees<br />
with Prof. Adei that not all of<br />
our MPs are straight-forward in<br />
their dealings with the public and<br />
state institutions as a whole.<br />
Prof. Adei, I believe, will not<br />
say anything without having reasons<br />
to say so. At his age he has<br />
no reason to sweep things under<br />
the carpet. Rather, he should<br />
speak out and help right the<br />
wrongs in society for everything<br />
in society right now-- morality,<br />
religion, education, governance,<br />
discipline, ethics, etc. etc., have all<br />
broken down and we need to<br />
correct them, and correct them<br />
fast before they become fully festered<br />
Payment<br />
Members of Parliament are<br />
paid to do a job for us, full time,<br />
not part-time, and I’m unhappy<br />
to see the house half-empty most<br />
of the time. All of them should<br />
be present (or at least one third<br />
of them) when there are proceedings<br />
except of course, those<br />
who have permission to attend to<br />
other duties. But by and large,<br />
there should be quorum at every<br />
time Parliament sits otherwise<br />
they are short-changing the people<br />
of Ghana and that’s exactly<br />
what they are doing—they are<br />
not fully doing the work for<br />
which we stood in the sun for<br />
hours and voted for them.<br />
By regulations and conventions,<br />
any meeting, particularly,<br />
those that are official including<br />
parliamentary meetings must necessarily<br />
have quorum before the<br />
meeting starts and the quorum<br />
must subsist throughout the pendency<br />
of the meeting otherwise<br />
decisions by the body remains<br />
null and void. I have seen on television<br />
several instances where<br />
there appears to be no quorum<br />
and yet proceedings go on.<br />
MPs, bring the honour back<br />
onto yourselves because we call<br />
you honourable. I rest my case.