The Speaker of Parliament, Alban Sumana Bagbin has officially declared four parliamentary seats vacant with barely two months to elections in December.
This ruling means that Ghana's hung parliament which gave the governing New Patriotic Party a slight upper hand as the Majority side with the support of an Independent Member of Parliament, Andrew Amoako Asiamah, will now tilt towards the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).
The NDC will now have 136 MPs in the house, while the NPP will have 135. Before this, the NPP had 138 whereas the NDC had 137.
The legislators affected by the ruling are the NDC's Peter Yaw Kwakye Ackah of Amenfi Central constituency in the Western Region, Andrew Amoakoh Asiamah of Fomena in the Ashanti Region, Kojo Asante, NPP MP for Suhum in the Eastern Region, and NPP's Cynthia Morrison of Agona West constituency.
In delivering his ruling on Thursday, October 17, the Speaker after a long reading, stated that if Article 97 (1)(g) of the 1992 Constitution was only to apply to a future parliament, then there would have been no need for it to exist since the MPs in question would have completed the term of the current parliament.
The Speaker also noted that the previous incident where the former Speaker of Parliament Prof Mike Oquaye expelled the Fomena MP from the House after the NPP had informed him about his decision to go independent, was not binding on him or any other Speaker.
The Speaker also noted that once the notice of polls had duly confirmed that the four MPs were going independent, they had no business to remain as MPs in the current parliament.
He thus proceeded to declare their seats vacant.
The decision follows an official petition to the Speaker by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament, Haruna Iddrisu.
It comes after extensive discussions and arguments presented by both the Majority and Minority sides of the House.
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