Sirens, Driving Without Speed Limits: Bagbin denies knowledge of any such bill before parliament

The Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, has denied knowledge of an alleged Legislative Instrument (LI) seeking to allow Members of Parliament to use sirens, and drive without a speed limit.

It was earlier reported by a section of the media of parliament's intention to introduce an LI to amend portions of the Road Traffic Regulations 2012.

The new changes, the reports said, if passed, will grant MPs and Ministers of State privileges previously reserved for specialized and emergency vehicles.

Furthermore, the amendment of the Regulation 74 of L.I 2180 was to allow for the fitting of sirens or bells as warning appliances on specific classes of vehicles, including those owned by justices of the Supreme Court, MPs and Ministers of State.

However, clarifying the reports that have since gone viral, Speaker Bagbin said there is no such LI that has been brought before parliament, thus reports circulating around must be ignored.

“… There’s nothing like that before parliament. And so, I thought maybe something was being done behind my back so I started calling all over and all my directors said no, they have not seen anything like that. I have a responsibility of admitting many of these things, sometimes they may elude me but I haven’t seen any such thing and later on I was told it was a regulation, that one too was amended,” he said while addressing students at the University of Ghana.

Explaining further, Speaker Alban Bagbin said the supposed LI was rather a regulation that was amended, however, parliament does not have the authority to amend regulations or instruments.

“We don’t amend regulations. We don’t have the power by the constitution to amend regulations or instruments, we don’t have. So, I just told the people that,, one it can’t be true. Your parliament cannot amend... the constitution in fact has delegated that power to other bodies, not to parliament, and so when they bring an instrument either in the nature of an LI, that’s legislative or CI, constitutional, if out of 100 provisions we disagree with 1, we are not even allowed to amend that 1. We either have to throw out all the 100 or we allow it to pass.

“And they make sure that it is impossible for us to throw it out by insisting that we must have two thirds majority votes to throw it out, and in a bipartisan parliament like this, its almost impossible to get two thirds majority to vote against an instrument particularly because of the fundamentalist nature of politicians, not only in Ghana, but many countries. I only succeeded in getting parliament to throw out an instrument when I was chairman of the subsidiary legislation committee in 1994…

“Since then, nothing of this sort has happened, so you see there definitely must be lessons for us to learn,” he stressed.

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MAG/AE