Police, court can deal with MPs without Speaker’s prior permission-Samson Anyenini asserts

An MP or any person the police will show courtesy to by inviting (invitation often turned into arrest) when they could be arresting, ought to reciprocate the gesture. You could plead to either be allowed time to fetch your lawyer (which you are entitled to), or ask for an adjournment if the invitation disrupts an important schedule. The police have often granted such requests especially if the case or one’s role is not that serious/critical and not urgent.

Let not any MP suggest ever again that the police or the court cannot deal with a legislator unless and until the permission of the Speaker has been procured in advance in writing. The IGP ought not to be seen encouraging this unlawful and obscenely discriminating dictate. Why write to the Speaker especially in a serious and urgent matter only to give room for an MP-criminal-suspect to be alerted to either elect to sneak off or conceal evidence of crime.

A reading of the 23rd edition of, arguably, the world’s biggest reference for parliamentary history and practice, Erskine May Parliamentary Practice, will show that the privilege of freedom from arrest has long been refined to be consistent with the dictates of the rule of law. In fact, article 117 and 118 of Ghana’s Constitution mimics such modern reform. I was excited reading the plain sensibly tolerable position in England, and even this position as at 2004 had received recommendations for further change including to restrict non-service of such processes only to the precincts of Parliament, I observe. I share this portion:

“In all cases in which Members of either House are ARRESTED on criminal charges, the House must be INFORMED of the cause for which they are DETAINED from their service in Parliament. It has been usual to communicate THE CAUSE of committal of a Member AFTER his arrest; such COMMUNICATIONS are also made whenever Members are in CUSTODY to be tried … or HAVE BEEN committed to prison for any criminal offence by a court or magistrate”.

I have spoken about how MPs violate the Constitution and their own Standing Orders with impunity failing to write to the Speaker about their absence and the Speaker failing to do his job of applying the law against these absentee MPs. Let the MPs and the leadership first comply with the law.

Dear IGP, if you allow the shameless elevation of this unconstitutional self-serving protocol into ‘law’ to continue, it is only a matter of time and your officers will look on and feel powerless when an MP is committing murder in front of them. Guess what? Citizens won’t!”