Revise, streamline Standing Orders to reflect emerging technology – Speaker

“After three decades of parliamentary practice, there is clearly an urgent need to finalize and approve reviews of the Standing Orders that have been carried out across several parliaments."

Is allowance instantly strangers applauded

The Speaker of Parliament, Rt Hon Kingsford Bagbin has called for the revision and streamlining of the Standing Orders of Parliament to be in synch with current development and technology.

According to him, reviews carried out across seven parliaments have revealed and established gaps and ambiguity in legislative processes.

“After three decades of parliamentary practice, there is clearly an urgent need to finalize and approve reviews of the Standing Orders that have been carried out across several parliaments. These reviews, it must be emphasized, have identified gaps and ambiguity in some legislative procedures. What is more, we need to further streamline the standing orders to reflect the current development and emerging technology.”

Delivering his lecture as the 3rd Eminent Speaker on the topic; “; THE FUTURE OF PARLIAMENT IN GHANA’S DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE” at the UPSA Law School organized program, Mr. Bagbin also intimated that despite its imperfections, democracy has been embraced by the world as the best form of governance developed yet by man. 

He added that many African countries, on attaining independence from colonization, have also embraced it and this shows that there must be something good about democracy.

Further to the above, he added that the uniqueness of Ghana’s constitutional design was intended as a “remedy against past failures” and that the 1992 Constitution of Ghana set the tone in Article 78(1) for formal executive-legislative relations in the scheme of governance in Ghana.

Also, Speaker Bagbin bemoaned the fact that while parliaments over the years can credit themselves with the number of laws passed, the same cannot be said about the quality of these laws. 

He thus noted that many laws have been enacted that cannot pass the global quality test per the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) as follows;

“1. How satisfactory are the procedures for subjecting draft legislation to full and open debate in parliament? How effective are committee procedures for scrutinizing and amending draft legislation?

2. How systematic and transparent are the procedures for consultation with relevant groups and interests in the course of legislation?

3. How effective is parliament in ensuring that legislation enacted is clear, concise, and intelligible?”

Additionally, he touched on the practice of appointing non-ministers MPs to Boards of state institutions as chairs or members and said that it has completed the process of cooptation of members of the party wing in parliament to do the bidding of the President which to him is not only going to bring to question the utility of our democracy but its very existence.

Present also at the lecture was the minority leader in parliament, Haruna Iddrisu, and his Deputy and other Members of the Minority side in Parliament.

The UPSA eminent Speakers lecture has so far hosted the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of UN Office for West Africa, Dr. Ibn Chambas, and also a member of the Joe Biden Campaign Team for the 1st and 2nd respectively.