Executive Director of ACEPA,Dr. Rasheed Draman
Minority challenging Speaker’s overruling of motion of rescission
ACEPA urges NPP, NDC MPs to cooperate in parliament
Parliament adjourns sitting to Tuesday, December 7, 2021
The African Centre for Parliamentary Affairs, (ACEPA), has stated that the current impasse in parliament between New Patriotic Party (NPP) and National Democratic Congress (NDC) members of parliament (MPs) may serve as a fertile ground for Ghanaians to vote out the two major parties who have dominated the political front in the Fourth Republic.
Both NPP and NDC MPs have in recent parliamentary sittings attempted to undo each other’s actions on the 2022 budget statement presented on Wednesday, November 17, 2021, by Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta – a situation that led to chaos on the floor of parliament on Wednesday, December 1, 2021.
But in an interview with GhanaWeb, Executive Director of ACEPA, Dr. Rasheed Draman, opined that the two parties should learn to collaborate in the 8th Parliament or risk being ousted out from the political scenes in the 2024 elections.
“If 2020, Ghanaians said we don’t trust the NPP enough to give them a majority, we don’t trust the NDC enough to give them a majority…and we give both parties almost equal strength in parliament and they don’t utilize that to pursue the interest of Ghanaians …in the interest of the voters that created that situation in the first place, we might go to the next election [and] perhaps Ghanaians can decide that we are taking the mandate from both parties and we are giving it to a third party,” he said.
To this end, Dr. Rasheed Draman advised both parties to take a cue from the voting pattern in the 2020 general elections and ensure that they complement each other in serving the interest of Ghanaians.
“The lessons from the 2002 elections I believe should guide the two parties as they get along in dealing with each other because at the end of the day …based on their performance in parliament … based on what and how Ghanaians judge them in terms of whether they are just blindly, in the case of the NDC endorsing executive actions .. or in the case of the NPP, whether NDC are also blindly obstructing government business.
“Ghanaians don’t want either. Ghanaians want a middle ground because that was the message that was sent during the 2020 elections that we had in this country.
“They might as well keep those lessons behind their mind as they go about [their duties] otherwise it is not going to be too good for either of them,” he cautioned.
Meanwhile, Parliament is expected to reconvene on Tuesday, December 7, 2021, in what promises to be another showdown as the minority NDC MPs seek to challenge the overruling of their motion of rescission of the 2022 budget approval.