Alban Bagbin and Kissi Agyebeng
Lawmakers sat in stunned silence and gasped as the Speaker of Parliament, Alban S.K. Bagbin, said that establishing the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) was a futile exercise.
The House was doing the consideration of the Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill when the Speaker indicated that the OSP will achieve no results in the fight against corruption.
He argued that the best way out to fight corruption is to decouple the Office of the Attorney-General from the Ministry of Justice.
“As for the law you passed on the establishment of the Office of the Special Prosecutor, I did tell you that it was an act in futility. You were not going to achieve anything, but you went ahead and passed it,” he asserted.
He added, “I am very clear in my mind that, that authority is embedded in the powers of the Attorney-General constitutionally.”
According to Mr. Bagbin, while the Minister of Justice is a political appointee, the Attorney-General ought to be a technical person, who is apolitical.
His comment came ahead of an approval by Parliament of the annual budget estimate of GH¢149,005,669 for the services of the Office of the Special Prosecutor for the year ending December 31, 2024.
The silence of the lawmakers was seen as the most prominent loss of a political voice in the debating chamber, with the Speaker taking on a perceived increasingly activist role.
By Ernest Kofi Adu, Parliament House