BREAKING NEWS: Speaker of parliament Bagbin declares 4 Parliamentary seats vacant

With just two months till the December election, Speaker of the House Alban Sumana Bagbin has formally declared four parliamentary seats vacant.

This decision means that the majority side, which is supported by Independent Member of Parliament Andrew Amoako Asiamah, would not lean toward the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), giving the ruling New Patriotic Party a tiny advantage in Ghana’s hung parliament.

The verdict has an impact on the following legislators: Kojo Asante, Andrew Amoakoh Asiamah of Fomena, Peter Yaw Kwakye Ackah of the NDC, Suhum MP for the Eastern Region’s NPP, and Cynthia Morrison of the NPP’s Agona West district.

After a lengthy reading, the Speaker delivered his decision, declaring that if Article 97 (1)(g) of the 1992 Constitution was only intended to apply to a future parliament, then the MPs in question would have finished the current parliament’s mandate, negating the necessity for it to exist.

The Speaker further stated that neither he nor any future Speaker would be bound by the earlier occurrence in which the Fomena MP was ejected from the House by former Speaker Prof. Mike Oquaye after the NPP notified him of his decision to become an independent.

The choice was made in response to a formal appeal submitted to the Speaker by Haruna Iddrisu, a member of parliament for the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

It follows lengthy deliberations and debates in the House between the Majority and Minority about the petition that former NDC Minority Leader Haruna Iddrisu submitted.

The petition used Article 97 (1)(g) of the Constitution and specifically targeted three MPs of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and one MP of the NDC.

According to this constitutional clause, a Member of Parliament must resign from their position if they attempt to run for office as an independent or abandon the party they were elected under.

Political tensions between the opposition and the ruling party have been brought to light by this circumstance, which has generated a great deal of discussion in Parliament.

Speaker Bagbin recognized the seriousness of the situation during a contentious parliamentary debate on Tuesday and asked for an extra two days to issue a well-reasoned decision.

Prior to this decision, Prof. Mike Oquaye, the former Speaker of Parliament, had maintained that the NPP, and no other individual or group of individuals, should file the complaint for the seats to be declared empty.

So, he had conveyed his hope that the Speaker of the House at the moment would grant the request to declare the seats vacant.