Parliament unable to identify MPs

Parliament unable to identify MPs

Accra, Feb 22 GNA – Parliament on Friday stated that it was unable to identify Minority MPs who held placards with inscription “Bloody Widow” during the swearing-in of Ms Lydia Alhassan, the new Member of Parliament (MP) for the Ayawaso West Wuogon.

Some Minority members held the placards in protest against the chaos that characterised the Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election.

The First Deputy Speaker, Mr Joseph Osei-Owusu on February 6, ordered an investigations into the incident to find the MPs who held placards to be dragged before the Privileges committee of Parliament after the Minority leadership failed to apologise on behalf of its members.

He further instructed the table office of Parliament to produce footage of proceedings to identify the MPs who carried the placards for appropriate sanctions.

Mr Ebenezer Nartey, MP for Ablekuma Central after the reading of the Business Statement had sought for responses from the leadership on the matter.

Ms Sarah Adwoa Safo, Deputy Majority Leader in her reply stated that the Clerk and table office of Parliament had not been able to identify the MPs after reviewing the video footage of the proceedings for that day.

She explained that leadership was engaging the Public Affairs Department of Parliament to obtain the visuals from the other media houses that were present in the chamber to deal with the culprits.

“The information I’m picking up form the table and clerk’s office is that they have a tape, but the identification of the specific members has been the challenge and the tapes have been presented to the first Deputy Speaker” she added.

“I want to assure members that leadership will take the matter up. If parliament tapes are not as visible as we are being told from the public affairs directorate, I believe there were other media personnel in the chamber who might have recorded what happened.”

She assured “we won’t rest on that, we will make sure that the directive by the first Deputy Speaker to get the tapes to identify specific members for purposes of contempt, we duly assure that those tapes will reach the first Deputy Speaker and privileges committee.”