BAGBIN ROARS: MPs familiarity with me is breeding contempt!!!

The Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, has complained that in his view, the long years of comradeship he maintained with Members of Parliament have led to some of them reducing the reverence and social graces worthy of the high office he currently occupies.

Mr. Bagbin made the complaint in Parliament on Tuesday to express his reservations that an otherwise formal communication from him in his official capacity as Speaker to the House, turned into a debate on the Floor, which in his view, ought not to have happened.

“ Leadership decided to debate a formal communication. I tell you, it is a very bad precedent. No Speaker tolerates such a matter. But since I have been with you for all these years, it looks like familiarity is becoming, what, contempt”, Alban Bagbin grumbled.

He made the statement just when the MP for North Tongu Constituency, Mr. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa rose to his feet to seek guidance on an Appeal Court ruling regarding the circumstances under which a MP remains absent from Parliament for over 15 sittings can have his or seat declared vacant.

Speaker Bagbin had asked Mr. Okudzeto Ablakwa is he was continuing the debate.

But the North Tongu representative said he was only seeking guidance so that Members would be well guided to avoid a possibility of being dragged to court over discrepancies in the procedures and circumstances under which the seat of an absentee Member can be declared vacant.

Okudzeto Ablakwa’s submission was direct and clear: “I want to seek your guidance in view of the 11th December 2008 decision of the Appeal Court which made a distinction between those who are absenting themselves within 15 days and those who have absented themselves beyond 15 days.

“The Appeals Court held that if you absent yourself as a Member of Parliament beyond 15 days, it is automatic. The Clerk of Parliament should just write to the Electoral Commission and declare the seat vacant. It is a very radical position the Court took once you have exceeded 15 days. If you are within 15 days, you know, Parliament, the Speaker, Privileges Committee, can manage the situation and see if you can be appeased of a sort. But once you have crossed 15 days, the Appeals Court says that it is automatic the seat must be declared vacant.

“So I am seeking your guidance in line with this Professor Kwaku Asare decision; should the Privileges Committee not also be looking at this avail Appeals Court decision so that we do not run into some …If somebody takes what we are doing now to court, how do we defend it if it is not consistent with what the Appeals court had done on 1th December 2008 so I seek your guidance”

PREVIOUS COMPLAINTS

Speaker Bagbin has had cause to complain publicly that he was not comfortable about the conduct of some Members of Parliament and just last month, he actually threatened to have Members who misbehave during proceedings thrown out of Parliament.

“I will be compelled to get the Marshal to get people arrested and sent out…Parliament is not a place for joking. It is a place for business, serious national business

“This is a different type of Parliament. We must be prepared to change to accept the decision of the people and work together,” ,” Speaker Bagbin warned on Wednesday, February 23, 2022.

Alban Bagbin, until January 7, 2021 when he was elected as Speaker, was the longest serving member of Parliament, having served since 1993 when the first parliament under the Fourth Republic was inaugurated.