Ghana: Parliament becomes one of the most transparent in Africa

The Speaker of Ghana’s Parliament, Mr Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, has stated that the January 2024 Standing Orders of Parliament make the various Committee meetings of the legislature open and accessible to the public.

That, he explained, formed part of Parliament’s effort to deepen transparency and accountability in its activities.

It would be recalled that Ghana’s Parliament was recently ranked first in the Africa Open Parliament

Index, Mr Bagbin said in his opening address at Kwahu during the orientation workshop for the second cohort of Members of Parliament (MPs) and Procedural Staff on the new Standing Orders of the House. He said: “The old Standing Orders were discovered to have presented certain lacunae, anomalies, lack of clarity, and inconsistencies and the development of the current Standing Orders has been under review since 2002 to ensure that, the Orders are all-encompassing and reflective of evolving institutional needs.” To achieve this, he stated “In consultation with leadership I constituted a Technical Committee to speed up the review of the November 2000 Orders, consider its coverage and to provide for all the possible governance scenarios provided for in the framework of the 1992 Constitution.

“The committee engaged with leadership, consulted various committees, sought the expertise of specialists in contemporary parliamentary democracy, and researched current best practices in other jurisdictions. The result is the January 2024 Standing Orders,” the Speaker said. To buttress his point, Mr Bagbin quoted the renowned American entrepreneur and scholar, Max Depree, who once said, “We cannot achieve what we desire if we remain stagnant in our current state.”