With the President’s failure to meet his 2018 deadline for the passage of the Right of Information Bill imminent, his Vice has taken over in providing fresh deadline.

Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia says “it looks like all things being equal, early in the next session of parliament” this bill “by the grace of God” and with “your effort” will be passed.

Stripping those two lines of coded probabilities, it means the first quarter of 2019.

Before looking forward to the new date, looking backwards to the old deadline is critical to understanding the controversy over the RTI bill.

It was on March 6, 2018 at the Independence Square on Ghana’s 61^st birthday.

On the day marking Ghana’s right to self-rule, President Nana Akufo-Addo promised, Ghanaians will also have the right to information.

It has been 282 days since that speech that recalled the fighting spirit of freedom fighters in the Gold Coast.

Taking a cue from this colonial fighting spirit, civil society organisations took the fight on with social media campaigns, distributing leaflets on the streets to raise awareness, wearing red T-shirts, rallying around parliament house and an entire media countdown to ensure the government meets its own self-imposed deadlines.

The value of all this effort comes down to Parliament scrutinizing 34 out of 92 clauses at the Consideration stage. Not even half.

There are also 138 proposed amendments to the 57-page bill with only 21 days to the end of the President’s December 2018 deadline.

All the public advocacy over 282 days has got less than half the work done.

But with considerably less advocacy, Parliament has passed the Ghana Aluminum Integrated Authority Bill laid on March 15, 2018. It has also passed the GETFund Amendment Bill 2018, the NHIL Amendment Bill 2018, the Luxury Vehicle Bill, the Legal Aid Commission Bill.

And much shorter time to pass several loan and trade agreements such as Master Project Support Agreement for $2bn Ghana Sinohydro Corporation and African Continental Free Trade Agreement. 

Why the delay?

Leaders of both sides of Parliament often known to disagree both agree on this rare occassion that on the RTI bill, the delay was down to the reading of the government’s 2019 budget, that is the Appropriation Bill.

Photo: Majority leader Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu, NPP MP Ben Abdallah and NDC MP ABA Fuseini

Parliament needed to devote time to give the government its spending power in 2019, it was explained.

But it was Majority leader Osei Kyei-Mensah Bonsu who promised within the timeframe of the President’s promise that the bill will be passed before the budget which was read on November 15, 2018.

That promise was missed, Joy News presenter Evans Mensah said. The Majority leader would later say, Parliament would debate the bill ‘side by side’ with the Appropriation Bill, Evans Mensah continued.

That was also missed.

Chairperson of the Constitutional Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee Ben Adballah made the President’s assurance double sure by offerring his own commitment to help pass the bill before the year ends.

But that date, he said on Joy FM’s Top Story Monday is now “only a tentative” date.

But this should not be miscontrued as a pussy-footing Parliament, Ben Abdallah indicated and stressed Parliament has demonstrated “commitment”, “utmost good faith” plus ‘the political resolve’ to pass the Bill.

First Deputy Speaker of Parliament Joseph Osei Owusu joined him in raining new phrases at doing an old job, adding that the MPs have “always been committed”  and have applied the “necessary speed and accuracy” to get the good done.

The poker in Parliament’s wheel was – the budget and the fact that when a bill reaches the Consideration stage “you don’t have to rush…you need to take your time”, Ben Abdallah Banda said.

The First Deputy Speaker of Parliament explained further, all this agitation around the bill would have been avoided if Parliament had passed the bill in 2016.

“We had practically finished”, he recalled the dying days of the last Parliament.

At that time the New Patriotic Party was the Minority in Parliament and resisted the NDC government which had the Majority in Parliament and was making a last minute push to pass the bill they had previously stalled on.

The NPP had won the 2016 general elections and did not want to have the bill become law under the existing NDC government. There is also the view that the incoming NPP government feared the law would put the new government under pressure to be transparent beyond what is politically wise.

Two years after tha showdown in Parliament, Joseph Osei Owusu now put that controversy this way; “You know we work with time and once the time elapsed we had to come and start afresh”.

That Parliament’s mandate expired January 6^th 2018.

Meaning the job which was almost complete in 2016 now had to start again in 2018. And it did start in March 2018 when it was once again laid before Parliament.

Nine months down the line, the Vice-President is offering another deadline.

Improving Dr. Bawumia’s “all things being equal” deadline of “early next session of Parliament”, Ben Adballah winnowed this down to “within the first two weeks of next year”.

And then he added “probably”.