Alban Bagbin
It is said that anybody who fails to learn from history is doomed to fail.
That is the path that Speaker Bagbin has adopted following the confusion that has engulfed Parliament. For the over three decades of our democratic process in the Fourth Republic, there are clear examples of MPs contesting parliamentary elections on different platforms that made them legislators.
Recent history includes personalities such as Michael Teye Nyaunu (MTN) who, while MP on the ticket of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), contested the subsequent election on the ticket of Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings’s National Democratic Party (NDP). The late Rashid Bawa, as an independent MP for Akan Constituency, later stood for election on the ticket of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).
Likewise, Joseph Osei Owusu and Boniface Abubakar Saddique also abandoned their status as independent MPs to contest on the ticket of the NPP. In all these instances, the then Speakers did not exercise the same discretion that Speaker Bagbin has done.
We know if a precedent is bad it cannot be a good example to resolve the present stalemate. Speaker Bagbin should help Ghana to avoid the kind of global embarrassment facing the country as a result of this needless stalemate.
And the biased attitude of Speaker Bagbin also emboldened the NDC MPs to march in the Chamber of Parliament like schoolchildren on parade, apparently celebrating their Majority in an unlikely 24-hour economy.
Quite sadly, this group of NDC MPs was led by a one-time Attorney General, Dominic Ayine. Also a Catholic, we wonder why the violent and indisciplined NDC spirit seems to have taken hold of the NDC MPs. Not too long ago, Mahama Ayariga, also a lawyer, led a group of NDC apparatchiks to storm the Bank of Ghana to demand the resignation of Governor Addison.
We find it difficult to come to terms with the Ghana flags the NDC MPs held aloft shouting yea, yea, and we wonder what victory they were celebrating. Maybe, the NDC MPs were celebrating the end of government business that can create disaffection for the Akufo-Addo government.
Since Speaker Bagbin assumed office, the NDC MPs have embarked on various schemes to shut down government business. If the NDC campaign is failing, Boardroom directives like that one issued by Speaker Bagbin will not revive the campaign fortunes of John Mahama and the NDC.
It is not about whether the Supreme Court has power to make the determination last Friday by ordering that the four MPs return to the House until the final determination of the substantive case.
We want to ask the NDC lawyers and their allies whether they are really conversant with the law and whether Supreme Court orders become part of our laws?
Any action contrary to a court order, not determined by the same court or a higher court can only breed anarchy and the state of nature.
The Supreme Court has decided to examine the merits and demerits of the case before it. Let us wait for its final determination and stop badmouthing our judges.
It appears to us the NDC is not interested in the December 7 elections. John Mahama and his team want to use Speaker Bagbin to achieve their “reset” agenda because there is a push back from the voters, even in the vote bank of the NDC, the Volta Region, where the people are turning out in their numbers to hear the message of hope from Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia.
And now that Speaker Bagbin has put Parliament House under lock and key sine die, when will the House receive the Constitutional Instrument (CI) from the Electoral Commission to set the ground rules for the polls? The CI requires to be in the House for 21 sitting days to take effect.
We urge our leaders, spiritual and temporal, to raise their voices of reason, to at least reach out to Speaker Bagbin to give our democracy the chance to flourish and endure. We know Speaker Bagbin respects the National Catholic Bishops Conference, and the bishops should call him out so that our democracy is not destabilised by one of their own beloved sons. The Catholic Bishops should not be preoccupied with novenas to end galamsey. Speaker Bagbin too requires a novena in order to play the true role of an impartial umpire in Parliament.