The Member of Parliament (MP) for Tamale Central, Alhaji Inusah Fuseini, has urged the president not to stampede the legislature into passing the Vigilantism and other Related Violence Bill 2019.
Rather, he stated Parliament should be allowed to use its procedures to pass the bill.
Parliament has been recalled for an emergency sitting which was supposed to consider the bill but that has been put aside.
Speaking recently at a meeting with anti-corruption groups at the presidency, President Nana Akufo-Addo said he was committed to getting the bill passed latest by June ending.
“The Vigilantism and other Related Violence Bill 2019 is not something that is going to have to hang around for months and years, this is something that hopefully by the end of June or the latest, we will have a meaningful law on the table signed up,” he assured.
However, the President’s comment appears to have angered Alhaji Fuseini, who is also the Ranking Member on the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee saying, “Parliament is not an extension of the executive, the president has no business giving timelines to parliament on how it should do its job, he should concentrate on his business as president and leave parliament alone to do its job.
“The initial process to get the bill passed, was truncated when it was set aside and instead, they were asked to work on the Companies Bill, that means we will have to go back and start the processes all over.
“The executive having introduced the bill into parliament, it is now the property of parliament and that parliamentary institutions and procedures will be used to pass the bill into law, since the Bill in its current form, lacks structural clarity in many respects while it infringes on certain provisions of the constitution.
“We need to look at all those things, there is the need to engage stakeholders to ensure that the law is passed consistent with the 1992 constitution and if the president says he should not be stampeded, parliament should not also be stampeded into doing his bidding,” Alhaji Fuseini stressed. -myjoyonline.com
