Looming Disaster

There is a trend going on in our body politic that if care is not taken, Ghana’s Parliament will become “politically rubber check”

The quality in Parliament is slowly retrogressing into a complete state of intellectual miasma churning out rigidities.

“A statesman, Vincent Cyril Richard Arthur Charles Crabbe, has pointed out Parliament as a weak link in Ghana's governance system. While some MPs are a stand-out quality, the former Supreme Court justice observed that "if you take the overall, I am afraid there are quite a number of people in parliament who in my view, should not be there".

The latest critique follows a CDD Public lecture addressed by veteran journalist Kweku Baako who also castigated parliament for failing to deepen the culture of democratic accountability in Ghana.

MPs are becoming glorified councilors or social workers, unable properly to hold the government to account, or influence national policy responsibilities – between parliament and constituency – has swung heavily towards imbalance.

Our MPs dispatched to parliament without a job description become bogged down with an empty toolbox for work. They have completely become workers without readily tools and skill to execute certain technical expertise. What we currently have is woefully inadequate as a country and the entire machinery of government must sit up.

We as a country must be meticulous in our quest to elect and send representatives to parliament to represent us. We have also become assigns to this catatonia which is very tragic.

The democracy which we have counts peoples' heads; they don't count the content of their heads", said VCRAC Crabbe who was Chairman of the Constituent Assembly for the drafting of the 1979 Constitution. He expressed worry that Parliament is often reluctant to investigate its own members when allegations of impropriety are made against them. He pointed to the British Parliament where an MP was sacked from Parliament for lying. He suggested ethics and values are not taken seriously in Parliament. “I am not so sure we have the competent people who should be in Parliament".

Ghana's parliament has had to bear the brunt of several leading personalities and civil society groups concerned about the quality of scrutiny of legislative documents. The former speaker Doe Adjaho was disturbed about the quality of debate on the floor.

Day after day, parliament is continuously losing its essence because of the rigidity of the political culture and the quality of persons we have been sending to parliament. The state spends colossal amount of resources on them for the minisculeresult. They traverse the full length of Parliament for nothing but receive monthly payments and other allowances.

Parliament is slowly turning into an occult of laziness and “chew and pour”. They really don’t add to anything but continuously repeat themselves. Most MPs come for sittings but would not contribute to any idea and when exposed resort to the old rhetoric that they work in committees of which produce nothing new.

In fact, our MPs must sit up and work. They must be seen always seeking to advance intellectual discourse and stop making parliament market square. The government must perform and if they sleep the other two arms will have a field day.

The public must help correct this tragic situation we found ourselves. We must have an accountable government. If there is no oversight, there will be no good governance. The nation must wake to these realities and civil society organizations must rise up before they turn this nation into a political and economic chasm.