The Speaker of Parliament is urging the leadership of the Majority caucus to prioritise consultations in their decision-making processes with regard to business of the House.

Mr. Alban Bagbin noted that this is the only way the activities in the legislature will run smoothly.

“The only way is to get the two sides to consult and to dialogue with each other, to cooperate, to compromise, to collaborate to achieve consensus, this is an imperative imposed on us political leaders by the people of Ghana, we have no choice,” he said on Monday.

The past year has seen the most physically aggressive House in the history of the fourth republic.

On January 6, 2021, the election of a Speaker ended in fisticuffs after the process turned chaotic.

This was climaxed by the exchange of blows later in December during the deliberation over the approval of the controversial Electronic Transactions Levy (e-Levy) which was contained in the 2022 budget.

The hung nature of Ghana’s 8th Parliament has been an underlying factor in all these situations.

However, Majority MPs have laid the blame at the Speaker’s doorstep, accusing him of displaying partisanship in steering the house because of his NDC affiliation.

First Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Joseph Osei Owusu has already opined that government may never be able to rely on Mr. Bagbin for a successful government business.

“… how to deal with the challenge of taking advantage of the one majority we have, knowing that we may never be able to rely on the Speaker in these circumstances. We must work with the view that there are 137 of us plus one, who may be presiding. In that circumstance, how do we go about reaping that one advantage we have as a caucus?” the NPP legislator for Bekwai Constituency quizzed.

According to him, the Majority Group will have no choice but to take advantage of the support from the independent candidate.

But speaking at the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association workshop, Alban Bagbin stated that there is a more productive alternative to the overdependence on the numbers’ game.

He explained that “when the other side fails to gather their number and a decision doesn’t favour them, the Speaker cannot be the cause…I am not a member of Parliament in Ghana.”

Meanwhile, Parliament is expected to resume on January 25. Key among the issues to be discussed is the re-introduction of the proposed E-Levy by the Finance Ministry.