Kumado spoke the truth - Majority Leader

Accra, Sept. 13, GNA - Mr Felix Owusu-Adjapong, Majority Leader, has described Professor Kofi Kumado's paper on Financial Autonomy for Parliament as objective and realistic.

Mr Kofi Kumado, who was the main speaker at the 20th Speaker's Breakfast Forum, said most of the problems facing Parliament were self-inflicted. The Majority Leader, who was responding to some of the comments made by the Professor, said the concept of separation of powers, which most people clamoured for, only existed in "our imagination".

"Even in the United States of America the Vice President presides over Congress."

Counting his personal experiences, he said, as a Member of Parliament during the Second Parliament of the Fourth Republic, he had crafted a Private Bill on Real Estates, which could not have any meaningful financial consequences but the Speaker at that time would not allow it to pass. According to the Speaker at that time even the purchase of a ballpoint pen for the proposed Board under the bill was going to have financial consequences on the Consolidated Fund.

Mr Owusu-Adjapong said during the Third Parliament a committee took the initiative to deliberate on how to oversee the activities of Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs) during which they stayed out of Parliament well into the following week.

He said when they returned to the House the Speaker at that time ruled that since they did not seek his permission before embarking on that enterprise they were to be marked absent on the attendance sheet. The Majority Leader said the idea that a paper had to come from the Executive, for it to be laid in the House and the Speaker directing a committee to work on it constituted a real work of a committee was not healthy for the growth of the legislative culture.

He asked constitutional bodies to take advantage of the Special Budget Committee created by the House to take care of their budgetary needs.