By Edzorna Francis Mensah and Gloria Amoh
The Deputy Minority Chief Whip and Member of Parliament for Banda has acknowledged the roles played by successive leaderships to come up with a new Standing Order being used currently for effective public business both in the chamber and the committee levels.
He said the old orders being used concurrently with new ones for smooth transition have been adopted since 2000 and revising it to reflect modern practice will give MP to work efficiently and precisely when it comes to filling questions to some selected public institutions to help promote transparency and good governance.
Speaking to Journalists on the issue, Ahmed Ibrahim said, the wide consultation made the new Orders rich with specific committees carved from existing ones for specific as he recognized the work done by Speaker Kingsford Sumana Bagbin, who he said “has seen it all, from the backbench to a ranking member to a Minority Leader to a Majority Leader, Deputy Speaker to full Speaker, as well as the leader of the House, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, he had been in Parliament from 1997 till date.
Ahmed Ibrahim, said, he was privileged to visit the sister Parliament of Nigeria, that’s Abuja and every Parliament has to bring their own standing, “when I went there, they were on the ninth or 10th Standing Orders but in Ghana, the case is different. We had our first standing orders in Ghana in 1983, when the fourth Parliament, first Parliament of the Fourth Republic started”.
“From November 2002, we’ve been practicing with the old standing orders, and that is from 2000 to 2024, which is about 24 years. So, you can see that sometimes in cases we send them to court, the court will give directives saying you have to change this, this is unconstitutional, they have to be in conformity with the Constitution.
The new Orders has split the Finance Committee for instance in three: Finance, Budget and Planning reducing over 20 members to 13 members as well as new committees like The Ways and Means committee.
“Most of the committees have been divided into three, a committee like the finance committee. It used to be a 25-member committee. Now it has been divided with three we have a committee on finance, the Committee on economy, we have a country on planning a committee on an economy, we will be dealing with matters of the economy, then the Finance Committee will deal with matters of finance, the committee defense and interior has also been provided, we are going to be dealing with national security intelligence. And that is what we know that previously it was only one committee that was taking care of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Interior, this new standard is not going to do that,” He added.
Ahmed Ibrahim stated that, after practicing this for a long time, there is the need to be able to divide most of the committees.
