Majority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, has stated that Parliament has more lawmakers than required, and can accommodate 200 Members of Parliament (MPs).
He bemoaned that the increment of 275 members of the House had been tainted with political considerations.
“My position on the number of MPs has not changed because the last time the number was increased to 275, I disagreed because I do not know of any established democracy anywhere in the world where at the conclusion of any census or 10 years thereafter the number of seats in Parliament have to be increased,” he said.
Responding to a question about how the House presently constituted an odd number of MPs of 275, Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, who is the MP for Suame Constituency in the Ashanti Region, insisted that the nation could have sustained 140 MPs but was increased to 200 before the commencement of the Fourth Republican Parliament, thereafter got increased to 230 and to 275.
“Perhaps, we could have lived with the 140; it was increased to 200 just before the commencement of the Fourth Republican Parliament and thereafter got increased to 230 and to 275, and I propose when a constitutional review is conducted, a cap on the number of lawmakers should be prioritised.
“I think we should bring the issue to a conclusion and I think in the review of the 1992 Constitution, we should put a specified number that we cannot go beyond the number and I think even with the 200 or the 140, I think we could live with that,” Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu maintained.
The eighth Parliament whose tenure started on January 7, 2021, has 275 MPs with the two representative parties – the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and National Democratic Congress (NDC) – having 137 MPs apiece and the sole independent lawmaker is the MP for Fomena Constituency in the Ashanti Region who chose to work with the NPP hence giving the NPP 138 MPs.
Speaker, Alban Bagbin, pronounced earlier this year that the development made the NPP the Majority Group and not the Majority party, and recently reiterated Parliament was a hung one and there was no majority in the House.
Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu issued a stern disagreement in a press conference to address the supposed rejection of the 2022 budget by Minority MPs after the Majority staged a walkout. –ghanaweb.com
