Chaotic Parliament: Clerk of Parliament was ‘weak, unprepared’ – Professor Gyampo

Professor Ransford Gyampo, a political science lecturer at the University of Ghana has said that Cyril Kwabena Oteng Nsiah, the Clerk of Parliament, should be blamed partly for the chaos during the election of the Speaker of Parliament.

Chaos characterized the dissolution and inauguration of the seventh and eighth parliaments respectively as tempers of MPs went out of control.

Cyril Kwabena Oteng Nsiah who oversaw the process struggled to impose his authority as the MPs-elect engaged in violent behaviour and shenanigans including throwing punches and snatching ballot sheets and boxes.

Speaking to Joy News in an interview monitored by GhanaWeb, Professor Gyampo opined that the Clerk was not prepared for the event.

“We had a Clerk [to] parliament who was clearly very weak and unprepared for the job. We’ve witnessed this before. We saw the days of Ken Takyi and co. He was quite weak and seemed unprepared. He should have anticipated some of these things and surmounted a meeting among the leaders to brainstorm and find solutions to the issue before it escalated”.

At the end of the process, it was Alban Bagbin who emerged Speaker of the Eighth Parliament of the Fourth Republic.

Gyampo believes that unlike the Clerk, Alban Bagbin has the experience to check the conduct of MPs and ensure that things do not spiral out of control during debates on the floor.

“Now you have the Speaker of Parliament who has the experience, persona and pedigree in the person of Alban Bagbin. He’s been there for 28 years and has been Second Deputy Speaker for some time. I want to believe that given the experience he has, he would quickly be able to meet the leaders of the house behind the scenes when some of these issues may happen."