Policy Analyst, Dr. Theo Acheampong, has suggested the decoupling of the executive arm of government from the legislature as a solution to reducing the absenteeism of Members of Parliament.

According to him, the constitutional requirement where the President has to make about 50% of all his ministerial appointments from Parliament should be forgone for one where the President can choose whomever he wishes to fill a position.

His comments come on the back of a list released by Odekro which shows that about 30 Members of Parliament had absented themselves from Parliament beyond the constitutional threshold of 15 sitting days.

This is aside from the three other MPs – Sarah Adwoa Safo, Henry Quartey and Kennedy Agyapong – who have already been dragged to the Privileges’ Committee of Parliament on same issues.

The list of the other 30 includes Ministers like Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, the Dormaa Central MP; Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, the Ofoase/Ayirebi MP; and Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, the Ablekuma West MP.

Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile Saturday, Dr. Theo Acheampong explained that due to the complication created by the current constitutional provision, most of these Minister MPs would be able to easily talk their way out of facing any sanctions from the Committee.

“And I think the solution or what we should all consider here is has it come a time now as Ghanaians to actually decoupling those two provisions where you can actually select your ministers from wherever you want without necessarily the recourse to the parliamentarians because I think the number is about 50% or so if I’m not mistaken. So if at any point you have 80 plus ministers and let’s say half of them are coming from the house, then it’s going to be a problem,” he said.

He added that “But at the end of it all, I think the fundamental point really is we need constitutional reforms in this country. We spent a lot of money, over 20 million dollars in 2010/2011, canvassed a lot of positions and literally threw away that 1000-page document as though the money didn’t matter and that is where I think we need to focus a bit of our attention on.”

Meanwhile, he is insistent the Speaker of Parliament and the Committee “crack some whip.”

“The process has to be fair and I think the Privileges Committee will give them the avenue to come and explain themselves…” he said.