The Executive Director of the African Centre for Parliamentary Affairs, Dr Rasheed Draman, has said the Speaker of Parliament’s action of not allowing the Minority Members of Parliament to argue their motion to probe President John Mahama for accepting a Ford gift from a Burkinabe contractor before rejecting it, was within the ambits of the law.
Mr Edward Doe Adjaho threw out the motion of inquiry filed by Minority legislators on Thursday, 1 September, explaining that the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), a constitutional body, is already investigating the case.
In dismissing the motion, Mr Adjaho told the house “after a careful study of the correspondence from CHRAJ, I have come to the conclusion that the matter is not different in material, in particular from the matter under investigation by CHRAJ.”
But Ranking Member of the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee of Parliament, Joe Osei Owusu told Class News’ parliamentary correspondent, Ekow Annan on the same day that they will file the process with the same evidence before the Chief Justice.
Mr Owusu held the opinion that if the Speaker was going to say the motion was not admissible before the house, then there was no need to have summoned legislators in the first place.
But speaking to Class News, Dr Draman said the Speaker by law had the right to throw out the case but would have broken the law if he had refused to recall the MPs for a sitting. “The speaker couldn’t do otherwise than recall the house because if he didn’t, he would have been breaking the constitutional provision and we know the implications of that. He would have been dragged before a lot of bodies and so on and so forth and there would have been lots of noise in Ghana for many years to come about that.”
“…The minority has the right to ask that parliament be recalled and I think the Speaker didn’t have very much in terms of choice. Whether the proceeding lasted five minutes or one minute, I think it is another issue all together. In terms of the motion, again, I think it’s within the Speaker’s right to admit or reject the motion. Unfortunately, unlike a court of law where people who feel that they have concerns about issues like this can appeal, in parliamentary proceedings, I think there is a lot of a limitation, so the Speaker exercised the right under the standing orders under our constitution”.
Source: Ghana/AccraFM.com
