Celebrating 30 Years of Uninterrupted Parliamentary Democracy: Speaker Bagbin Visits selected Media Houses in Accra

Speaker of Parliament, The Rt. Hon. Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin today visited two media houses, as part of his initiative to celebrate Ghana’s uninterrupted media parliamentary democracy over the last 30 years. He visited Radio XYZ and GBC both in the Greater Accra region.

The objective of the visit was to share and explain the purpose of celebrating thirty years of uninterrupted Parliamentary democracy under the fourth republic and also understand operations and challenges of the media as well as issues hindering the work of media practitioners with respect to existing legislations that require Parliamentary review.

Parliament is considering reviewing some laws to give the media practitioners in the country the free space to operate.

Speaker Bagbin explained that, there are four arms of government and not three as has always been said, adding that the media is actually the fourth arm that perform the greater task of ensuring that in democracy there is accountability to the citizenry.

Speaker Bagbin expressed worry about Ghana been placed 62nd position now on the annual press freedom index even though in 2015, Ghana was at the 22^nd position.

He further touched on the creation of new committees in Parliament such as ways and means committee, committee of intelligence and others to help strengthen the work of the four arms of government and also give the best to the citizenry in terms of Democratic governance.

He added that, Parliament has revised its standing orders to allow the media to be present at all committee sittings except where the chairman want a particular sitting to be in-camera unlike previously.