North, James Agalga, insists that the absence of the Minority Caucus from Parliament is not aimed at disrupting the business of the House.
He claims that, unlike the Majority caucus, the NDC legislators have legitimate reasons to be absent from Parliament.
Mr Agalga further asserted that the motive of the boycott is to express their dissatisfaction with the manner in which MP for Assin-North, James Gyakye-Quayson’s trial is hindering him from performing his legislative functions.
“We are disgruntled by the fact that President Akufo-Addo’s government continues to dissipate Gyake Quayson who was re-elected for the second time as the Member of Parliament for Assin-North.
“We have a situation whereby the Court is saying that they will prosecute Gyakye-Quayson on a daily basis in such a manner that completely disables him from performing his legislative functions. We think that this attitude clearly is an attack on parliament’s ability to function,”the Builsa North MP bemoaned.
Additionally, Mr Agalga indicated that the Speaker of Parliament never ruled the boycott of the Minority caucus as unlawful.
The legislator claimed the Speaker explained to the House that “boycotts are a legitimate political tool that minority groups in parliament across the world have used to register their dissatisfaction with government behavior.”
Consequently, he emphasised that boycotts are not novel to Ghana’s parliament, alluding to a boycott of a ministerial vetting by the then Minority caucus [the NPP] in 2013.
He thus maintained that considering the numbers of the Majority caucus, they were at an advantage [the presence of an independent candidate], to proceed with parliamentary business even if the NDC failed to be in parliament.
However, he asserted that the Majority caucus’ inability to come to parliament in their numbers is attributable to the fact that they are not ready to attend to parliamentary affairs.
Mr Agalga accused the NPP legislators of prioritisng running campaigns for their flagbearer asapirants over seeing to parliamentary business.
“The truth of the matter is that they [NPP] are not ready to do business… because they are busy campaigning for presidential aspirants of their party… so, they cannot make time to come to the House to prosecute their own business.”
Ultimately, Mr Agalga argued that in the context of the NDC boycott of parliament, they have deployed a conventional tool to express their unhappiness with the judiciary and the executive arm of government.
Source: myjoyonline.com / Doreen Abena Kyerewaa Akata
