Parliament Passes Controversial Entrance Exams Bill

Parliament has passed the controversial legal profession regulations Bill 2018 despite strong protest from both the Minority and Majority sides of the House.

Before the report of the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs and Subsidiary Legislation Committees was put to a voice vote, the House was thrown into turmoil as chairmen of the joint committee were booed as they presented their recommendation for the approval.

According to Starr News’ Parliamentary Correspondent Ibrahim Alhassan, even though the recommendation is yet to be debated, members of the House physically expressed their disagreement to the report which, allows the General Legal Council (GLC) to continue to conduct entrance exams at the Ghana School of Law.

The committees led by Bawku Central MP Mahama Ayariga and Ben Abdallah last week agreed to the contentious request by the GLC to conduct entrance exams for law students. It, however, rejected the conduct of interviews as part of the admission process.

Circumstances surrounding legal education and admission into the Ghana school of Law have become topical after only 91 students out of the 474 who sat for the bar exams passed to be called to the bar. A total of 206 law students are to repeat the entire course whilst another 177 students have been referred in one or two papers.

The Speaker of Parliament Mike Oquaye was to blame for the passage of the bill, according to Minority Chief Whip Muntaka Mubarak.

“Everybody sees how terrible the Speaker is taking decisions in the House,” he told Ibrahim.

He added: “And I keep repeating that the Civil Society should be interested in how the Speaker is conducting himself. It is so terrible. We have rules [and] as for listening to us, you listen, make your ruling and if we want the ruling we know what we want to do. But to deliberately and continuously do what he is doing…He is the biggest threat to our democracy.”

He continued: “Look at our standing orders, you vote—a member has the right to challenge the vote and ask that you should do either a headcount or to go for a division…the way he is behaving I think that all of us need to be very concerned and very worried about the way the Speaker is conducting himself.

“It is too much unbecoming of somebody who has written so many books on theory and now he has the opportunity to turn his theories into practicals, he is completely messing up.”

Source: Starrfmonline