Don’t tag Clerk as partisan; Speaker orders rectification of errors in attendance register
Speaker of Parliament, Alban Kingsford Bagbin has asked the Minority in Parliament to desist from accusing the Clerk of Parliament of being partisan for wrongly marking some NDC legislators as absent from proceedings on Tuesday.
The affected legislators were present during the deliberation on the Electronic Transfer Levy (E-Levy) but were erroneously marked as absent by the Clerk.
According to Mr. Bagbin, it was a “grievous error” on the part of the Clerk, but he does not believe it was done to spite MPs of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).
“Being the Speaker and having the ultimate responsibility, I will take responsibility and apologise sincerely to members for this error,” he said on Thursday.
The Minority in Parliament has not gone easy on the Clerk of the House, Cyril Kwabena Nsiah for the error he committed on Tuesday.
Speaking in Parliament, Minority Chief Whip, Muntaka Mubarak accused the Clerk of Parliament of tampering with vital evidence to be used by the Minority in challenging the one-sided approval of the controversial bill.
He reiterated that the development has caused a near-crisis within their ranks, “especially when it was not corrected yesterday.”
Addressing the House, Speaker Bagbin admonished that the partisan tag being hung on Mr. Nsiah should stop.
“I will plead with you that whatever our suspicion [is], it should remain suspicions. Therefore, I am also not happy that the Clerk is being classified as being partisan,” he stressed.
He, however, noted that if Members of Parliament have any evidence that staff of the House have political affiliations, they should report for further investigations.
“The Parliamentary staff as we have it, by law are non-partisan. Any of you who have evidence about the partisanship of any of the staff here should draw my attention to it.
“We will put the process in place and investigate them and definitely they will not be here, they will be out of here,” he stated.
He further directed the table office to rectify the errors.
Source: Ghana News
