Stop rushing to SC, it weakens Parliament - Prof. Kofi Abotsi urges MPs

The Dean of the Faculty of Law of the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA), Professor Ernest Kofi Abotsi, has urged members of Parliament to stop “walking” to the Supreme Court (SC) over parliamentary matters without exhausting internal mechanism to resolve differences.

He said rushing to the apex court only invited it to open up Parliament, weakening its ability to hold the Executive and its own members accountable.

Besides, he said whenever the House also fought against itself, such division undermined its power to assert its authority.

“If Parliament, therefore, fails to deal with internal conflicts, it risks institutional fragmentation that will destroy the institution,” he warned.

Danger

Speaking at a three-day orientation training for the new members of the Ninth Parliament on Saturday in Ho, Prof. Abotsi expressed fears that if Parliament continued to be fighting itself, it was the Executive that would benefit.

“We seem to be seeing too many instances of brinkmanship, fighting to the gallery to the core and I fear that if this is not quickly arrested, the Ninth Parliament may be in some kind of danger,” he said.

The event brought together experts and senior legislators with hands-on experience to take legislators and staff of Parliament Service Board through various topics to build their capacity in parliamentary procedures.

Some of the topics were the rights of the majority and minority, conflict management and consensus building, responsibilities of members of Parliament, how to be an effective legislature: mastering the rules of procedure, skills in advocacy, lobbying and negotiation for a legislator as well as monitoring and evaluation of public services and capital.

Conflict resolution

The law professor said Parliament was the strongest of all the institutions but over the years it had been weak.

He said the Legislature should technically appoint everybody from ministers, top level approval and members of the Judiciary.

However, he said due to the reality of political parties remotely controlling Parliament, Parliament had been weak.

To rectify such situation, he said it was important for the House to recognise the authority of the Speaker who was given the authority under Order 129 to suspend MPs who misconducted themselves in the House.

“How do you handle a situation however if one MP walks to the Supreme Court and asks the court to look into something?” he asked.

He said the principle was that the apex court, very often, did not easily cut their own jurisdiction short but if they were often invited, “they would look at the matter”.

“Imagine a minister goes to court to sue the President, asking the court to declare an action of the President wrong and you will see how absurd you will look.”

“When a member of Parliament walks to court, what they have done is that they have asked the court to open up Parliament,” he said.