The Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, has characterized the police effort to arrest Madina Member of Parliament Francis-Xavier Sosu during a demonstration as an obstructive attempt on his ability to do his responsibilities as an MP.
According to him, the police had no authority to detain Mr. Sosu since he was preparing to address his people during the demonstration and had followed due procedure.
Speaking at the Speaker’s Breakfast Forum in Kumasi, he announced that in order to alleviate the tension, he would engage other stakeholders to develop laws that would govern future handling of similar crises.
“There is an increase in public discourse in recent times about the privileges and immunities of MPs, officers of Parliament, and Parliament itself. It is not new. Since I became an MP, it has been coming up a number of times, and even now, some of these things come to my desk, and we have processed a number of them well. We are all aware that a number of MPs are before the court, and they are being prosecuted. So, there is nobody saying, MPs or Parliament are above the law.”
“But this particular instance before us involving the MP for Madina, I can put my neck on it, that you have no such powers after he had gone through all the processes with you, and then you send your contingent to arrest him while he was talking to his people. That is obstruction and how can that be said that the speaker is preventing the MP to be arrested. That can not be tolerated”, he added.
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