By Adiza Bawa
The Minority in Parliament and the Ghana Armed Forces have in the last few days been on a “collision course” over the withdrawal of military personnel from the Speaker’s security detail.
The Minority has described the action as being politically motivated given that the Clerk to Parliament had written formally to request for the personnel and the officers were duly deployed to be attached to the Office of the Speaker of Parliament who has been serving in the office since January last year. The action has received mixed impressions with some experts calling for more consultation to prevent an escalation of the hostile situation in Parliament.
On the basis of this, and the fact that the Military itself agreed to have deployed the personnel, Executive Director of the Center for Parliamentary Affairs Dr. Rasheed Draman has called for clarification on the security detail provided for the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin. He said the immediate past Speaker Professor Aaron Mike Ocquaye had indicated that he did not receive military protection during his tenure.
Speaking to GBCNews, Dr. Draman said he is not sure where this places the country in terms of democratic arrangement. He noted that it has added another layer of difficulty in terms of the relationship between the majority and minority.
“Until this incident, I didn’t know that the Speaker of Parliament had Military Personnel in his security detail. What I have seen is what everyone sees, that is the Police protection and the convoy. I don’t know who or what is usually in the vehicles that follow the speaker.”
He added, “if there’s clarity, we can’t have our immediate past Speaker say he didn’t have Military protection.”
Dr. Draman said if there was any disagreement in Parliament over this issue, proper procedures should have been followed. He said for the consolidation of democracy, there is the need to critically think about how to get things right to avoid further complications.
“However you look at it, some mistakes have been committed already and I don’t know where the mistakes are coming from. Whether it’s from the Speaker’s Office or from the military high command, or National Security,” he said.
Now that it is out in the public domain, it has been mediatized, the whole day, that is the topic. Discussion on the airwaves and so on. I think it is important that they all step back and try to think about the implications of it”
