Bagbin goes AWOL …deputy sick, house adjourns after fighting

The Parliament of Ghana, yesterday, adjourned sine die in a dramatic plot that has the Speaker, Alban Bagbin, missing in action and the First Deputy Speaker Joe Osei-Owusu very unwell to an extent he was “shaking like a leaf”, according to an eye witness description by Majority Leader Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu.

Speaker Bagbin seems to have gone absent a day earlier without official leave because neither his whereabouts nor reasons for his curious absence is known to the Majority caucus; which claim he has not responded to phone calls and WhatsApp messages sent to his contact number to find out if all is well.

The Minority caucus has also not explained his absence.

“We have no information as to the whereabouts of Mr. Speaker. We see this as a grand political partisan design by the minority group to frustrate us, and we don’t’ want to suggest that Mr. Speaker is unavoidably absent to frustrate government business. We expect Mr. Speaker to be present”, Deputy Majority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin has stated.

The Majority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, has also expressed worry about the absence of Speaker Bagbin, his friend of many years: “I called him a couple of times, but I couldn’t reach him and I sent a message including WhatsApp messages but I have not had any response”

Yesterday’s adjournment sine die came somewhat as an anti-climax because the House was expected to have continued a resolution and possibly pass a vote to decide if the E-Levy Bill should be considered under a Certificate of Urgency or not.

A day earlier, the same resolution had ended in fisticuffs when First Deputy Speaker, Joe Osei-Owusu, who was sitting in as Speaker due to the absence of Alban Bagbin, suddenly asked the Second Deputy to take over and chair the House.

The Minority interpreted that as an attempt by the First Deputy to get an opportunity to cast a vote and they therefore raised a rather unusual type of physical protest and one that was clearly un-parliamentary.

But the Majority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, has said the First Deputy was not going to cast his votes but rather to take his medications and visit the urinal.

He said the First Deputy was not well but had to be prevailed upon to chair proceedings.

“We had to go and prevail on him to come and preside. Of course, if he’s presiding, given his own long tenure in Parliament, his own understanding of the rules and procedures in Parliament, we thought that he’d be able to navigate crisis periods much more with respect than the Second Deputy Speaker but it was getting too much for him.
“So he said he wanted to excuse himself to take his medication and then perhaps to come back if he felt okay, or perhaps maybe to sit somewhere,” Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu told Joy News.

He continued: “Is it the case that a Speaker can’t even excuse himself to visit the loo? Is it the case? The man was indisposed. He was shivering. And he went to the clinic, the record is there. So we had to persuade him to come and sit. He was in the Chamber and he was shaking like a leaf.”

During yesterday’s sitting, Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, moved for an adjournment until a date and time when there would be a more serene atmosphere for the business of the House to continue.

The Minority Leader Haruna Iddrisu agreed and rose to second the motion.
He suggested that the adjournment would make space for further consultations.

Haruna Iddrisu said there is the need on the part of Parliament to demonstrate to the country that Ghana’s democracy is growing and will not suffer some unacceptable scenes and spectacles witnessed on the floor.
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The First Deputy Speaker, Joseph Osei-Owusu, adjourned sitting sine die, although what Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu had asked for was for an adjournment to somewhere the middle of January 2022.