The Member of Parliament for Bolga East constituency, Dr Dominic Ayine has defended the actions of Muntaka Mubarak saying that he fought to protect and preserve the Constitution of Ghana.

According to him, the Asawase MP acted in accordance with the law unlike his colleague on the other side, Carlos Ahenkorah, who snatched the ballot papers in Parliament during the collation stage of the voting process.

Speaking on JoyNews’ Super Morning Show Friday, Dr. Dominic Ayine said: “We were doing this in the name of democracy. We thought the secret ballot as stipulated in the Constitution must be respected.

“He (Muntaka Mubarak) wasn’t engaged in any ballot box snatching. What he did was in protest against unconstitutional conduct.

“At the point where somebody’s conduct threatens to undermine the Constitution, if that conduct can be called out and condemned, you should do it. And I think that was what my able Chief Whip was trying to do.”

Dr Dominic Ayine dismissed all allegations levelled against Muntaka Mubarak that have described his actions in Parliament as unconstitutional.

“The Constitution itself in Article 4 mandates that when there is any subversive activity that is designed to overthrow the Constitution, you can take any action to preserve the Constitution by preventing the subversive activity,” he stated.

He further explained that Carlos Ahenkorah’s behaviour, however, in Parliament was not in line “with the collective feeling that the constitutional provision in the election of the Speaker” through secret balloting must be respected.

He added: “I was very disappointed because anytime I watched that on television, I asked myself ‘how can the law makers be that lawless?’ I never thought in my life time we will see that play out.”

Although he expressed worry and disappointment over the incident in Parliament, Dr Ayine attributed it to the Members of Parliament being simply human.

“This is a human institution. It gets to the point where our humanity, we being vulnerable to feelings like anger, irrationality takes over us. We can be forgiven for that, every human being is capable of that kind of behaviour,” he stated.