Ghana’s former Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Martin Amidu, has excoriated the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, over his behaviour as speaker of Ghana’s August house of legislators.
According to Amidu, Bagbin behaves like a village chief with the MPs and Ghanaians as his subjects and Amidu called for him to put a stop to that.
“Mr. Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin needs to be told to stop talking down on Ghanaians as though he is a village chief and we, his subjects,” Amidu roared in a recent write-up tackling numerous subjects.
The outspoken former Special Prosecutor laid down his thoughts in a write-up titled “Games in Parliament – Speaker and Minority’s motion of censure,”
Read his post below…
INTRODUCTION
Mr. Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin needs to be told to stop talking down on Ghanaians as though he is a village chief and we, his subjects. No humble, learned, erudite, and experienced person will ever seek to silence his critics in a constitutional democracy by telling them that: “In all humility, please note that there is deep thought in whatever I do. Don’t underrate my knowledge, skills, experience, and expertise in Parliamentary practice and procedure.” It is for the public or one’s professional peer group, to determine one’s level of knowledge, skills, experience, and expertise and not for one to subjectively assert them
and trumpet his competences to the world.
Ghana counts more learned, erudite, and respected citizens who have by choice not contested to be members of Parliament, have been and are profoundly knowledgeable in parliamentary practice and procedure than Mr. Bagbin is or can ever be. This country has had the fortune within the Fourth Republic of seeing learned, erudite, highly respected, and self-effacing Speakers of Parliament who had not served even one day as a Members of Parliament. Try as he may, Mr. Bagbin cannot measure up to the eminent, respected, and self-effacing Justice D. F. Annan, the first Speaker of the Fourth Republic for the 1st and 2nd Parliaments even though he is not known to have ever been elected to any Parliament in Ghana. The eminent, respected and equally self-effacing Mrs. Justice Joyce Bamford Addo was another competent
Speaker of Parliament in spite of the fact that she was never an elected Member of Parliament. Both Mr. Justice Annan and Mrs. Justice Bamford Addo exhibited humility and accommodation to criticism from citizens and members of parliament as Speakers of Parliament and never gloated about their abilities.
Coming down to persons who have been nominated from Parliament to be Speakers of Parliament Mr. Doe Adjaho who entered parliament on the same day as Mr. Bagbin was nominated as the Speaker of Parliament for the 6th Parliament under the Fourth Republic and performed more creditably without boasting about knowledge and expertise in Parliamentary practice and procedure. I also never heard the Speaker of Parliament for the 7th Parliament who was also nominated from amongst members of parliament gloat over his deep thinking, knowledge, and expertise in parliamentary practice. The difference between previous Speakers and Mr. Bagbin is that his predecessors were umpires while he has consistently exhibited the qualities of a transactional member of parliament forgetting that he was elevated to the Speakership of Parliament of the 8th Parliament after his retirement as a Member of Parliament.
The conduct of Mr. Bagbin in the processes leading up to the passage of the 2022 Budget Statement and subsequent Appropriation Act, 2022 and the current motion of censure filed by the minority caucus of Parliament against the Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta vindicate the assertion that Mr. Bagbin behaves more as a transactional Member of Parliament than the Speaker of Parliament as an umpire.
Read Amidu’s full thoughts here…
Source: theGhanaianVoice.Com