Alban Bagbin, Speaker of Parliament, has indicated that he is open to any form of disagreement with his ruling on issues on the floor of the House even though sometimes it makes him uncomfortable.
Some decisions of the Speaker of Parliament have resulted in some 'hot' exchanges between the Speaker and Majority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu.
Bagbin, who feels that such a disagreement is sometimes needed told the Parliamentary Press Corps on Friday, October 28, that MPs are entitled to agree to disagree.
"I don’t usually want to comment on the disagreements because we are entitled to agree to disagree and so I usually welcome disagreement and then we can test them upwards. Even in the Supreme Court itself, there is always serious disagreement there and even sometimes, a decision can be unanimous but after a month they will see that they erred...
"We are human, we can err and so when someone says I disagree with you, don’t hurt because his perspective might be different from yours...," he explained.
He added, "...my very good friend Majority Leader, he came in 1997 at that time I was the Chairman of the Committee of Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs; the current President was my ranking member from 1997 to 2000; he [Majority Leader] was just a beginner. So, he was lucky by his stature that he got deputy whip when I was Minority Leader. So, from time to time he followed my delegations.
"Most of the areas that he is now, I was there before him; I was in leadership and so he understudied very well. He succeeded me and I even changed his code of dressing – he used to be in suit always – when he became the Minority Leader, I had worn the traditional dressers throughout so, he changed…"
"I always welcome his disagreement even though I always feel uncomfortable about it. Any disagreement is welcome," Alban Bagbin stressed.
Background
On Wednesday, October 26, Speaker Alban Bagbin ruled that the Privileges Committee’s report on the fate of Dome-Kwabenya legislator, Sarah Adwoa Safo, is not final.
The Committee in its report on the absenteeism of Adwoa Safo from parliamentary meetings recommended that her seat be declared vacant for failing to provide an explanation for her absence.
But delivering the much-anticipated ruling, the Speaker noted that the report of the Committee must be tabled before the whole House for a decision to be made.
“It is for the House that will go through it because the mandate given to an MP, representation is so crucial that it cannot be left to the subjective view of any person or group of people but the whole house”, Speaker Bagbin said on the floor on Wednesday.
However, this did not go down well with the Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu. The Majority Leader who doubles as the Suame MP said the ruling is “unfortunate.”
“I am expressing my discomfort with this unfortunate ruling that you have made. I totally disagree. I think it doesn’t sit with the Constitution and with your own earlier statements that you made in this House relating to those same things. Very inconsistent,” he retorted.
This reaction caused another clash between himself and the Speaker who did not take the comment lightly.
Alban Bagbin demanded a retraction to which the MP reluctantly obliged. In a subsequent press conference, the Suame MP added that “the Speaker is totally wrong in his understanding of the Constitution”.
He said the Speaker’s ruling flouts Article 97 of the law which the Speaker quoted as the justification for his ruling.
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