The African Center for Parliamentary Affairs (ACEPA) has warned against the ongoing impasse in Parliament where the Supreme Court halted Bagbin’s ruling, which declared the seats of four Members of Parliament vacant, saying it may one-day breakdown legislative business in the House.
The Executive Director of ACEPA, Rasheed Draman, told Bernard Avle on the Citi Breakfast Show on Monday, October 21, that the current happenings tend to weaken public institutions if they go unchecked.
He alleged that the current happenings are a result of some MPs instigating private citizens to run to the courts to challenge some Parliamentary decisions.
He cautioned that Parliament may one day be paralysed as a result of the many contestations.
“But in this matter, which has many lines, MPs sometimes instigate stakeholders out of Parliament to run to the court and I have been telling them that what you are doing is weakening your own institutions because wherever you find yourself today, it is not a permanent station because minorities do change.
“We ought to be very careful how many times and how quickly we ran to the court for interpretation in attempts to hold the executive to account just because it does not please somebody. They are setting very bad precedents and if we are not careful, we will wake up one day and our Parliament will be paralysed.”
He therefore suggested that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo collaborate with the legislature and judiciary to have such issues resolved amicably.
“My view is that we need a three-way conversation between the president, the Speaker of Parliament, and the Chief Justice and anybody who thinks that this matter is going to resolve itself or things will play out in the end, they have to think again because we have seen instances in this 8th Parliament where both side dug in so much so that things were about to breakdown but those matters were not as serious as we have right now.”
