First Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Joseph Osei-Wusu popularly known as Joe Wise has said the impact of COVID-19 has constrained the space for good governance around the world just as it has been devastating to the global economy.
He noted that the quest for the containment of the COVID-19 pandemic has scaled up the use of emergency powers by a number of governments in the World.
According to him, this has given rise to “the widespread abuse of those powers.”
“The threat to democracy occasioned by this appears to be more catastrophic than the losses that have been experienced by humanity during the pandemic as the world risks losing the dividends of democracy should we fail to act in unison and fast enough,” Mr. Osei-Wusu said at the Fifth World Conference of Speakers of Parliament in Austria.
The First Deputy Speaker, who heads a five-member delegation to Vienna, said “the shrinking space of democracy” as a result of the search for solutions to the pandemic had been characterised, in a number of countries, by the excessive use of emergency powers by the Executive arms of government.
This, he noted, is often reflecting in decisions taken without recourse to the legislature, “in some cases, without due consideration to the concerns of opposition parties and in most cases, very repressive in their outlook.”
“Such decisions, devoid of public inputs do not often reflect the preferences of the governed neither do they guarantee the public choices making them liable to scaling down the standard of living of the people,” he intimated.
The First Deputy Speaker stated that “human rights abuses are inherent in this as basic freedoms are denied the people.”
For him, the use of “draconian measures” to impose far reaching restrictions in certain parts of the world, the expansion of the emergency powers of certain governments around the world beyond the reasonable remit of the law and the suppression of media freedom to publish anything other than what is politically correct from the perspective of governments, among others, are examples of undemocratic measures undertaken by certain governments under the guise of fighting the pandemic through the instrumentality of emergency powers.
“There is no gainsaying the fact that emergency powers are essential in dealing with major global challenges including the Covid-19 Pandemic,” he said.
But argued that “it is, however, for good reason that the laws of most countries require that emergency measures undertaken by governments are brought to the legislature for ratification and, particularly, for extension beyond the minimal terms that the laws often grant governments to exercise.”
He asserted that in Ghana, the Imposition of Restrictions legislation granted the President of the country to deal with the pandemic limited any emergency regulation enacted to a maximum period of three months in the first instance and to an extended period of only three months when it was absolutely necessary.
“That way, Parliament retained its control of the regulatory authority of the country.
In this day and age when the Sustainable Development Goals call for inclusive approaches to ensure that development is holistic and participatory to ensure sustainability, fighting the pandemic cannot take a different path for improved results.”
According to him, altogether, the legitimacy granted by the Parliamentary approval of the use of emergency powers by governments is complemented by the implicit consent of the public to cooperate with the government in finding a lasting solution to the problem.
By Ernest Kofi Adu
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