The Executive Director of the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Professor Gyimah-Boadi has condemned MPs of the ruling NPP for defending any accusation leveled against the government.

Speaking to Joy News, Prof. Gyimah-Boadi said such behaviour undermines the democratic principles of the country especially in this era of energy crisis where solutions are of essence but MPs are busy trading in insults.

“It’s a big problem if the ruling party’s MPs feel compelled to defend every accusation levelled against the government by the minority. As if the ruling party MPs are part and parcel of the executive branch.”

“…to have this situation where any allegation leveled against the government brings out the entire ruling party’s MPs rallying in support of the regime is bad for the democracy that we are trying to promote,” he pointed out.

On the energy debate in Parliament, he said MPs need to do more than engage in heckling in finding solutions to the present energy crisis.

Prof. Gyimah-Boadi told Joy News he expected the chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Energy to initiate the process of the debate instead of supporting the government.

“The energy committee in our view should have independently initiated investigations into the current energy crisis. It should have independently convened or tabled the motion but it simply failed to lead to demand accountability and responsiveness from the executive branch on the energy crisis and how it has handled it.”

He said it was rather unfortunate to have witnessed members of the committee joining the “partisan debate” which is a clear case of failure on their part.

Prof. Gyimah-Boadi stated: “The ruling party’s parliamentarians in particular are failing to make a distinction between critical commentaries that help government to monitor its own performance and that help to remind the government of its duty to take credible steps to correct mistakes and omissions.”

He said instead of bringing out solutions to the present energy crisis the ongoing debate has rather helped to reveal the partisan nature of Parliament when it comes to debating national issues.

“It has only been useful in revealing the partisanship prevailing in our parliament. It has failed to provide a single and straight forward honest answer to what in my view are fairly simple and straight forward questions.”