Former Member of Parliament for the Adentan constituency, Lawyer Buabeng Asamoah has opined that there is no need to set up an investigation into who ordered the military to be present in parliament during the election of a Speaker.
According to him, the country should focus on working on laws that will deal with what should happen when there is no clear majority and other related matters.
Speaking in an interview with Samuel Eshun on the Happy Morning Show, he said: “It is better for the Speaker and the President to sit down to find a way to improve on these types of occurrences than opening up an investigations to punish someone. How long will we look into this occurrence? These investigations do not help us grow.
If we will grow as a country, all the things that happened, we have to look at the way forward. Four years will come again and there will be a need for electing a speaker. The arrangements must be made now. Since the constitution was instituted, it has never happened that we don’t have the clear majority. So we need to make new laws surrounding this”.
Lawyer Buabeng Asamoah noted that inasmuch as the actions are to be condemned, we should be grateful that we finally got to elect a speaker.
A brawl in parliament began when Carlos Ahenkorah, Member of Parliament (MP) for Tema West constituency, snatched some paper ballots during an overnight vote to determine the house speaker.
Prior to this, the Member of Parliament for Asawase,Mohammed-Mubarak Muntaka, and Member of Parliament for Yapei Kusawgu Constituency, John, were seen rushing to where the voting booth and ballot box were and removing them from their place. This was in protest at how some NPP MPs were breaching the ‘secret ballot’ protocol.
This was followed by armed military personnel storming the chamber. Immediately the armed military men stormed the chamber, the MPs-elect started singing the Ghana National Anthem with a repetition of the last sentence of the first stanza “And help us to resist oppressors’ rule, with all our will and might for evermore”.
By: Alberta Dorcas N D Armah