Parliament can’t absolve itself from Ghana’s Economic Woes- Dr Rasheed Draman
The Executive Director of Africa Centre for Parliamentary Affairs, Dr. Rasheed Draman has said, Ghana’s legislative House, Parliament could not absolve itself from the current economic challenging facing the country.
According to him, if parliamentarians have played their oversight role effectively, some of the financial agreements and loans that pushed the country to its current debt portfolio could have been avoided.
Dr. Draman made the comments in his preliminary assessment of the two years of the 8Th Parliament of Ghana.
Parliament is, widely known as one of the central institutions of the state, alongside the Executive and Judiciary.
Traditionally, parliament oversees and scrutinizes executive activities, and represents all citizens, thereby giving voice to all.
The primary functions of Parliament are: to pass laws for the good governance of Ghana and to provide by giving legislative sanctions, taxation, and acquisition of loans, the means of carrying out the work of Government.
In addition to that parliament also scrutinize Government policy and administration through the pre-legislative scrutiny of bills referred to the Parliamentary committees, scrutiny of the various objects of expenditure and the sums to be spent on each, assuring transparency and accountability in the application of public funds.
However, speaking to EXPRESSNEWSGHANA in an interview last Tuesday in Accra, Dr. Draman said parliament had failed part of its oversight responsibility of the government’s excessive borrowing and expenditure which had increased the debt stock beyond 100 percent of the Gross Domestic Product.
He noted that Parliament’s role in defending the public’s interest had deteriorated over the years, but recent events where most of the government budgetary allocation was rejected is an indication that the 8th parliament had somehow performed better in saving the public purse.
With the current parliament of 137 MPs each of the political divide of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) with one Independent, the ACEPA Executive Director believed parliament could do much better to hold the executive to strict expenditure.
In a general assessment of the performance of the 8th Parliament, which is being described as “a Hung Parliament” Dr. Draman said there is a mixture of scorecards of the current parliament with its attendance challenges and success.
The successful blockage of some budgetary allocation for the Cathedral in the 2023 budget, among others, he noted has exonerated Parliament from being a clearing house for the executive without proper scrutiny of government policies.
While commending the House for standing up with the citizens to cut down the government expenditure, Dr. Draman also faulted parliament for failing to take a decision that would inure to the masses, citing the censure motion where the house was divided on a political whip system when almost every Ghanaian wanted the Finance Minister to be removed.
He added that too much partisanship may affect the power of the hung parliament as it was witnessed during debates on some of the national issues in the august house.
.He said notwithstanding the bottlenecks, Ghana is enjoying democratic dividends of peace and political inclusion and expressed the hope that Parliament would take advantage of its hung composition to minimize the rubber-stamp work they were performing on behalf of the executive.
Except of Dr. Draman’s interview with EXPRESS-NEWS
Source: expressnewsghana.com
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