Parliament summons Blakk Rasta over wee comments

Parliaments' Privileges Committee is to summon reggae artiste/radio presenter, Blakk Rasta; to explain comments he made about Members of Parliament (MPs), in relation to their use of banned substances by majority of them.

The presenter alleged on his Taxi Driver show on Accra-based Hitz FM that 80% of MPs smoked marijuana, locally referred to as weed.

His comments were reported to the Speaker of Parliament by MP for Afigya Sekyere East, Hendricks David Yeboah on Wednesday. The speaker subsequently directed the Privileges Committee to look into the presenter's comment and submit its report in a fortnight to the house.

The Barack Obama hitmaker in defense of his claims has stated that his statement was that the MPs used the substance, which could not be restricted to only smoking it because it had other uses.

Blakk Rasta, real name Abubakar Ahmed; has been championing the call to legalize marijuana, which remains banned under Ghana's criminal law. He is on record to have said that appearing before the Privileges Committee was the least of his worries.

He is the second person to be summoned before the law-making house after Prof. Alex Dodoo's summons earlier this week over his comments which imputed 'ignorance' on the part of MPs on the now infamous Ebola vaccine trials in the Volta Region.

There are hints that Parliament would invoke its powers to institute criminal proceedings against any comments that bring it into disrepute.