The Speaker of Parliament, Alban Kingsford Sumana Bagbin, has prayed Ghana gets another hung parliament as it enters another presidential and parliamentary elections in six months time.
Mr. Bagbin says another session of a hung parliament would go a long way to strengthen the nation’s parliamentary democracy.
Although the government has lamented how its business has been affected by the State’s 8th Parliament which for the first time in history, presented an equal number of members on both sides of the divide, with an independent candidate joining the other to form a majority, the longest serving lawmaker in Ghana’s Fourth Republic says the development is a good omen for the nation’s parliamentary democracy.
Speaking at the launch of the Democracy Cup to celebrate 30 years of uninterrupted parliamentary democracy Thursday, June 13, 2024, Speaker Bagbin said the hung parliament is more a blessing to Ghana’s democracy.
“But I must say that I’m proud to be part of this process of building the Parliament of Ghana from 1993, which has no doubt contributed significantly to enabling me to assume the onerous responsibility as Speaker of the first ever hung Parliament in Ghana.
“You can’t compare this Parliament to the others. This is a completely new game. Even if it happens, we have now repositioned ourselves to be able to handle it better. We are applying rules that were for a majoritarian system. You have to vote, and the majority will carry the day. So those rules were for that,” he shared.
He added that the era where ‘minority will have their say and majority will have their way’ with the majority always pushing government business through notwithstanding the minority’s opposition, which sometimes are for a good cause, was not the order of the 8th Parliament.
“Now we are running a Parliament where there is no majority. So you can’t apply those rules again. You have a Parliament that was seen as just part of public service, government agency. You’ve been told that these are our illustrious presidents, all happened to our past in my hands. And so there’s no way that anybody can push me aside and make Parliament an agent of government. It won’t happen when I’m alive,” the Speaker stated.
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