The immediate-past Majority Leader in Parliament, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, has disclosed that the party that forms the Majority side in the 8th Parliament will be known on January 15, 2021, when the House has its first sitting.
Currently, both the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) have 137 Members of Parliament (MPs) each with one independent MP making up the 275 total number of MPs in Parliament and both parties have claimed the ‘Majority’ title for themselves.
Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu said though the Independent MP for Fomena in the Ashanti Region, Andrews Asiamah Amoako had publicly stated that he would do business with the NPP caucus the latter’s position was not official.
He noted that Mr Amoako had declared his intention to work with the NPP side which would make the NPP the Majority caucus but he indicated that at the time he made that declaration he was an MP-elect who was yet to be sworn in.
According to him, now that Mr Amoako had been sworn-in, his position would be made official when the 8th Parliament has its first sitting on January 15.
It would be recalled that Mr Amoako, who has been elected the Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament, was dismissed as a member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) following his decision to break away and contest as an independent candidate ahead of the December 7, 2020, parliamentary election and was subsequently dismissed from parliament by the former Speaker of Parliament Reverend Professor Aaron Mike Oquaye.
This was in line with Article 97 (1)(g) of the 1992 Constitution which stipulates that a Member of Parliament shall vacate his seat “if he leaves the party of which he was a member at the time of his election to Parliament to join another party or seeks to remain in Parliament as an independent member”. –kasapafmonline.com
