Stop Voting your MPs out every Four Years; they need Experience – Speaker Bagbin

Speaker of Parliament Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, has advised Ghanaian electorates to allow Members of Parliament (MP) to gain adequate experience in the workings of the House instead of voting them out every four years.

Speaking at this year’s Commonwealth Parliamentary Association workshop, the Speaker explained that frequent change of legislators makes them unable to contribute substantially to the development of their respective constituencies.

Mr. Alban Bagbin, therefore, entreated electorates to allow their representatives enough time in office to foster consistent growth in their constituencies.

“In this game, monkeys play by sizes. It is good and proper to allow elected Members of Parliament to mature in Parliament. You can’t keep changing your members of Parliament like shirts and expect to reap good dividends.”

“You must give them the time to grow to be able to produce the dividends that you want,” the Speaker urged.

Monday’s workshop was on the theme “Effective parliamentary scrutiny, gender sensitivity and complexity.”

Touching on the success of the House, the Speaker pushed for extensive consultation between the Majority and Minority Group on government’s policies.

According to him, prioritising consultation is imperative for the development of the country as the 8th Parliament is a hung Parliament.

“The only way is to get the two sides to consult and to dialogue with each other, to cooperate, to compromise, to collaborate to achieve consensus, this is an imperative imposed on us political leaders by the people of Ghana, we have no choice,” he said.

His comments come as a time when the Majority and Minority have gone fist-to-fist over the approval of government policies such as the E-levy Bill.

To ensure the House does not witness another scuffle when it resumes on Tuesday, January 25, the Speaker is calling for deeper consultation.

Source: myjoyonline