Speaker Bagbin's judgement on what constitutes being present in Parliament has been criticized as ludicrous and unusual by Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, a ranking member of Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee.
Speaker Bagbin believes that a Member of Parliament is regarded present in the House and should be registered as such as long as he or she is within the Parliament building's precincts.
This theory, according to Okudzeto Ablakwa, departs from the presence doctrine that has been in place since the reign of Speaker Peter Ala Adjetey, and also offers numerous conflicts to Parliament's standing orders.
"I believe that goes against everything that Article 104 says about being present and voting" (1). You must be inside the room. Why is it that Order 48 allows for this?
If a Member of Parliament rises to raise a quorum issue, our Standing Orders, under Order 48, require the Speaker to ring the bell for 10 minutes, allowing everyone to enter the chamber. With all due respect, I find the Right Honourable Speaker's decision very ludicrous," he stated on JoyNews' PM Express Wednesday.
"I have enormous respect for the Right Honourable Speaker, as he knows, but on this matter of presence, I'm on all fours with Speaker Ala Adjetey, who was the first to pronounce on this matter, and he said that when you go to the male's room and sign and you don't come into the chamber, that's when you're in the chamber."
Speakers after Speaker Ala Adjetey have followed the same procedure in terms of Members of Parliament being present in the chamber before being registered as such, according to the North Tongu MP, therefore Speaker Bagbin's departure from the standard is "very weird indeed."
"This does not set well with me; it will necessitate significant changes to our standing orders." Why is Order 48 still in effect? Why do bells have to be rung?
"And now you have this stupid situation where a Member of Parliament is brought from hospital and we're told he's in an ambulance," I remarked when I got up to demand that the Honourable Kojo Kum's name be removed from the list of those present.