Minority will not be part of the illegality being foisted on Ghana - Opare-Ansah

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Parent Category: Justice & Security

Category: Law Reports

Created on Monday, 03 September 2012 00:00

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Minority will not be part of the illegality being foisted on Ghana - Opare-Ansah

The drama, political maneuvering and petty quibbling that have characterized the controversial creation of some 45 new constituencies is intensifying and showing no sign of abeyance.

Both Majority and Minority sides of Parliament – the battlegrounds for the fight for supremacy – have chosen intransigence over compromise with the Minority staging a walk out Monday in protest of what they call clear abuse of power by House Speaker Joyce Bamford-Addo.

Stamping her authority over a chaotic debate over the Constitutional Instrument creating the new constituencies, Mrs Bamford-Addo told Minority MPs she was not taking any further submissions from them, insisting her ruling on the matter was final.

The Minority had maintained that the CI73 which was laid before the House on August 15 before Parliament went on recess had metamorphosed into a CI77 without explanation – a development they contended was wrong but Madam Speaker stood her grounds.

Minority Chief Whip, Fredrick Opare-Ansah, told Joy FM an illegality was being perpetrated on the people of Ghana the Minority will not be part of that.

He said it was unclear which document was before the House in respect of the creation of the constituencies – is it CI73 or CI77. “The reason why we walked out is precisely because it is not too clear to us which document is before Parliament,” he stated.

Mr Opare-Ansah said apart from the change in the name of the document laid before the House, the Minority also discovered that the date on which the CI was gazetted - August 16, 2012 – was different from the date it was laid before Parliament - August 15 – which is a clear contravention of provisions of the 1992 Constitution.

Quoting Article 11(7)(b) which states that “Any Order, Rule or Regulation made by a person or authority under a power conferred by this Constitution or any other law shall be published in the Gazette on the day it is laid before Parliament,” Mr Ansah said it was curious that this clear breach of the constitution was being treated as a trivial matter by a law making body.

He said if care was not taken, a day would come when bills laid before Parliament would come out fundamentally from was initially intended and the excuse would be that the differences are minimal.

But Majority Leader Cletus Avoka insisted the Minority were blowing the issues out of proportion.

He explained that “we discovered that the provisions in the CI73 were in conflict with an earlier Supreme Court ruling so we decided to discard that one by way of withdrawing it and then laying a corrected CI.”

Mr Avoka said when the amended CI was sent to the Assembly Press to be gazetted in accordance with the constitution, “they discovered that they cannot use the same CI73 that has been withdrawn from the records and, therefore, the current number they gave it as far as 15 August is concerned is CI77 but bearing the same title.”

He insisted the subject is the same and there were no changes in the content of the instrument as claimed by the Minority.

From: Malik Abass Daabu/Myjoyonline.com