Parliament passed all Bills presented by Government

Parliament last year passed all the bills that were presented to it by the Executive Arm of Government to enable the state to function.

Principal among the 23 bills passed were the Criminal Code (Repeal of Criminal Libel and Sedition Laws) (Amendment) Act, 2001, (Act 602), the Bank of Ghana Act, 2001, the National Honours and Investiture Act, 2001 and the National Reconciliation Act, 2001, (Act 611).

Mr Peter Ala Adjetey, Speaker of Parliament, said this at the formal opening of the first sitting of the Second Session of the Third Parliament of the Fourth Republic in Accra on Tuesday.

He said 17 Legislative Instruments were laid before the House last year adding that although Parliament had a power of annulment of such instruments under Article 11 (7) of the Constitution, none of the instruments suffered the fate of annulment.

Mr Adjetey said Parliament resorted to the procedure of persuading the relevant ministers to withdraw an unacceptable instrument and to replace it with an acceptable one in cases where it found some instruments unsatisfactory.

In the exercise of its deliberative function, Parliament had had to extensively debate under motions and resolutions, a wide range of domestic and foreign policy matters including 25 International Agreements.

During last year, 169 questions were submitted by members and answered by ministers; while 90 statements were made by members and 14 by Ministers on policy issues to bring to the fore for public scrutiny, problems concerning their constituencies and of urgent public importance.

Mr Adjetey said many appointments by the President could be made only with the prior approval of Parliament and under the existing Standing Orders; this approval had been given only after a report of the Parliamentary Appointments Committee had been submitted to the House and debated.

He commended the appointments committee for conducting its business so effectively and for the business-like and transparent manner in which they had conducted the approval process of the President's nominees for ministerial appointments.

The Speaker said the procedure by which ministers and other members of the house were obliged to answer questions submitted by Members of Parliament was extremely useful in exposing wrong-doings or injustice where it took place thus keeping ministers on their toes and getting them to discharge their functions and ensuring transparency in their duties.

Mr Adjetey said within the next few weeks, Parliament expected to receive the State of the Nation Address from the President, which would be followed by the 2002 Budget Statement and Economic Policy of the Government, leading to the passing of the relevant Appropriations Act.

He said information had also been received that a number of bills including the Courts (Amendment) Bill, the Ghana Maritime Authority Bill, the Ghana Investments Fund Bill, the Forest Protection (Amendment) Bill and the Timber Resources Management (Amendment) Bill would be submitted.

Other bills would include the Value Added Tax (Amendment) Bill and Forest Plantation Development Fund (Amendment) Bill. The House would consider all of them before passing them into law, so would be a number of Legislative Instruments, International Agreements and other papers.

He said Parliament had been relatively weak because Ghana had had an executive branch of government throughout its 44 years of independent nationhood with a Parliament of less than half that period.

The Speaker said there was widespread realisation of this state of affairs by the international community and there was now a National Governance Programme and the National Institutional Renewal Programme to remedy the weaknesses of Parliament and to strengthen its pillars to enable it to function effectively.