Nana Otuo Siriboe II
CHAIRMAN OF the Council of State, Nana Otuo Siriboe II, has called on parliamentarians to make Parliament awesome and not awful.
“We have to make it work. We can’t do anything otherwise. We have only one Ghana. We have no choice, but to make sure that things come onboard and people will bury their egos and their entrenched positions for the good people of Ghana, for today and posterity’s sake,” he stated.
The Paramount Chief of the Juaben Traditional Area made the remarks when he led members of the Standing Committee of the Council of State, to pay a working visit to the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, in Parliament yesterday.
At least, two brutal fights broke out among the MPs on the floor of Parliament over the passage of the 2022 Budget Statement and Economic Policy of the Government because of the E-Levy, a proposed tax on electronic transactions.
The Council of State Chairman said his outfit did not want to go into history as councilors of the nation who sat unconcernedly to “allow things to go bad.”
“It will be a very serious indictment on us and we have started, and we expect full cooperation. When we met you the other day, I was very much impressed by your candid opinion on matters and the fact that you are also desirous of having a solution as early as possible, so that the country can move forward,” Nana Siriboe II stated.
According to him, members of the council pledged their support to the Speaker and acknowledged that Mr. Bagbin was best suited for the speakership position, and was working behind the scenes to ensure that he achieved success.
“We are particularly delighted that your position as a longest-standing Member of Parliament will bring to bear on the speakership your vast experience to manage and steer affairs of Parliament, in such a way that it would make you the shining star in the firmament of Speakers that have straddled the Fourth Republican dispensation,” he said.
He noted, however, that the Council of State members now have cause to believe that recent developments in Parliament seem to emerge from the high hopes that they had, and that they needed to do more to support and strengthen the Speaker to achieve that “distinction of being the Speaker of Speakers, especially with these developments of a hung Parliament.”
“You have come to the speakership in times such as this, where there are equal numbers of both the Majority and Minority and that the affairs have to be steered in such a way that it should be done deftly and with lot of tact and circumspection, you are the most suited person to carry out such a function,” Nana Siriboe intimated.
“There have been institutional issues, ego issues, procedural issues, and there have been a whole lot of issues, even fisticuffs sometimes, which is the least to be desired. But we feel, as our elders say, that ‘it is bent but not broken’ and that it could be mended. To be able to mend it effectively, we will need to get down to brass tacks and listen to whatever remote or immediate causes that may be,” he indicated.
Speaker
Responding, Speaker Bagbin said even though he is a member of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), he had never been a fanatic of party politics through his practice.
“I have always reached across the political divide, and I have very good friends on the other side of the political divide, and that is how come I won,” he posited.
He continued, “I couldn’t have won without the support of members from the other side. That is a reality and that is a truism, and that I believe. And so, you will hear me saying that, at the end of the day, I don’t expect either party to be praising me.”
He reiterated that in the performance of his function he would be impartial, “but that does not mean I will be neutral. This is what I learnt from my father, the late Rt. Hon. Peter Ala Adjetey.”
“I have an interest as a citizen and my position says I should only chart the path of the national interest which is the collective good. So any matter that comes before the House, I cannot be neutral because I have interest in it,” Mr. Bagbin posited.
BY Ernest Kofi Adu, Parliament House