Speaker Bagbin Got It All Wrong In Changing The Composition Of Parliament

I have finished considering Speaker Bagbin’s construction of Article 97 {(1g) &(h)} of the constitution concerning the issue of members that cross carpets in parliament. That law states that, “A member of parliament shall vacate his seat in parliament if he leaves the party of which he was a member at the time of his election to parliament to join another party, or if as an independent member, he joins another party. This means If a member votes on the ticket of a particular party and later changes his status either to be independent or joins another party, he or she is considered to have vacated his or her seat.

Based on this law, Speaker Bagbin declared four seats vacant. But the result was a radical shift in the balance of power within parliament because the ruling demoted NPP from the majority to the minority and the NDC from the minority to the majority with 136 members to NPP’s 135.

To be fair to the Speaker, his decision was well researched and the conclusion that flowed from the research was both rational and logical, even if unfair to the NPP. Moreover, the reasons argued by the NPP against the were not convincing enough.

But in making these kinds of radical decisions with grave consequences, the Speaker should have exercised more caution and done more consultations.. One should begin with the legislative history behind the piece of law being considered here. And when we do that, we see clearly that the law was made to protect parties, not to penalize or to expose them. Historically speaking, the incidence of crossing carpets was a commonplace problem in our first republic. Parties invested time and effort on their candidates only for these candidates to go to parliament to switch sides. This behavior was inimical to the party’s interest and appeared to undermine the vigorous work required for our new democracy. To wit, an individual voter doesn’t only vote for any person as such; rather he votes for his party. In fact, it is a common joke that people will vote for a goat clothed in party colors, notwithstanding that it is a goat that is going to represent them in parliament. So it was considered proper that the parties are able to guarantee that the individual going to parliament was not going to flip on them or discard them for another party. And the Speaker himself acknowledged this legislative history in the preamble to his ruling.

It therefore suffices to say that the piece of law was not made to disadvantage any party or to undermine its status, or to be applied against a party to achieve an advantage for the opposing side. That would be tantamount to interpreting the law to lead to absurd consequences.

To find precedent in the Oquaye decision to justify the Speaker’s decision is per se error. In the Oquaye decision, a member of parliament, Mr. Asiamah Amoako’s seat was declared vacant because he decided to go against the grain of the party’s wishes. After running and failing to secure the party’s nomination he went ahead and ran as an independent and won his seat. Out of frustration, the NPP leadership itself initiated the process to oust him because the party itself took the view that he had gone against its interest by running as an independent candidate. So here, the party was enforcing a piece of rule to punish a member they had already oust from the party.

This action should be distinguished from the present case. In the present case, the party is fully aware that ousting those members that have virtually betrayed it will be tantamount to acting against its own interest because of the razor-thin majority it maintains in this parliament. That is why the party has turned a blind eye to its wayward members. The party has not sought the intervention of the Speaker to trigger the rule of Article 97 because it realizes that the rule will work to the party’s disadvantage.

Under this kind of situation, the Speaker should not have invited himself into the rigmarole by declaring any seat vacant. As the situation stands, the Speaker has deprived the party of its majority status and given wrong effect to the law, disadvantaging a party whose members have gone rogue and acted inimically against it. Thos was never the intent of that tissue of legislation.

The speaker should have considered the issue holistically and applied the rule prudentially. As it is, because of the near balance of the forces within Ghana’s parliament, this ruling could force parties into untenable positions where their parliamentary candidates could easily be influenced to virtually cross carpet, and have their seats declared vacant, causing injury to their own side and upsetting the balance of power in parliament and creating the same kind of problem which the law was expected to resolve.

The Supreme Court could decide against this absurd outcome by empowering the parties to intervene to disown their members before the seat could be declared vacant. On the other hand, the Supreme Court could rule that the law has been applied against its intended purpose, leading to absurd and unintended outcome.