Second Deputy Speaker of Ghana’s Parliament Alban Bagbin has expressed his satisfaction with the achievements of the august House.
According to him, Ghana’s Parliament has progressed from non-existence, during a protracted period of military rule to its current state.
Referring to the early days of the first Parliament of the Fourth Republic in 1993, when Ghana returned to constitutional rule, the astute lawmaker said Ghana’s parliament has built a store of experience that it continues to share with other Parliaments across Africa.
“We had to depend on Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and other mature democracies, not only the UK but Canada, Australia, Germany, and France.
“Now we have been able to build a store of reach experience and we take the new members of Parliament through the orientations and workshops,” said Alban Bagbin.
He stressed that Ghana’s Parliament would not need to import expertise from Western democracies to train its members and that it has become an institution which other African countries rely on to build their own Parliaments.
“We have made a lot of progress and many Parliaments in Africa depend on the Parliament of Ghana to support them build not just the human resource but the institution of Parliament,” he adds.
Mr. Bagbin also recounted the condition of Parliament at the time he entered parliament some 25 years ago.
“We had no parliamentary service staff because we were in an undemocratic system for a long time. Therefore, we had to recruit fresh people and train them. There were no standing orders. The standing orders were dealing with some old constitutions and particularly with the British type of democratic practice and we had to transform that,” he said.
Alban Bagbin made the comments when he addressed a section of the media in Ho, the Volta Region capital, on the sidelines of a lecture organized in his honour to commemorate 25 years of being a Member of Parliament.
He has been the Member of Parliament for Nodowli- Kaleo Constituency from 1993 till date.
Mr. Bagbin has held a number of positions in Parliament since 1994 and capped his lawmaking career with the ultimate, the Majority Leader of the House.
At the lecture organized by a group called Youth Advocacy for Social Democracy at the SRC JCR of the Ho Technical University, the former Member of Parliament for Nkwanta South, Gershon Gbediame, also described Mr. Bagbin as not only an asset but an institution worthy of celebrating and preserving for many others to benefit from.
The theme for the lecture was “Experience: The Bedrock of Parliamentary Democracy”.