The Speaker of Parliament, Alban S.K. Bagbin, has been challenged by a former UN Senior Governance Advisor and CEO of JAK Foundation on his justification for the payment of ex-gratia to MPs.
The Speaker's stance, according to Prof. Baffour Agyeman-Duah, is untenable.
The Speaker's present attitude, he claims, contradicts a prior statement he made on the same subject.
As a result, he conveyed his dissatisfaction with the third gentleman of the land's remarks. "I listened to the Speaker's two speeches, the one from 2019 and his latest proclamation on the subject, and plainly you have revealed the hypocrisy of our political class in a very dreadful way, and I pity him."
"Secondly, the argument that you just made justifying the payment of this on the basis of personal goals of persons who want to serve the nation, and that you spend money because you go to funerals and all that, you must know that the state is not billed to pay your funeral expenditures." So I'm sad that the man's hypocrisy has been revealed so thoroughly," he remarked on Joy SMS on Thursday, June 16.
On Wednesday, June 15, the Rt. Honourable Speaker justified the payment of ex-gratia to Members of Parliament at a public presentation at the University for Professional Studies.
He said that money is critical for MPs' survival after they have served their country.
According to him, ex-gratia does not help MPs as much as the public believes.
He added that Members of Parliament spend three times as much money on campaigning for their election as they do on ex-gratia.
"We're having these issues because there's a misconception that ex-gratia is a large sum of money... You know you don't get that ex-gratia as an MP, since the money you spent to get elected to Parliament is three or four times what they give you as ex-gratia. No MP departs Parliament in a better position than when he or she arrived.
"Once an MP is elected, he or she must win the following election, thus they will go to any length to please the constituents so that they may win again." So, if they lose the election, they've lost everything; they've invested everything in the election, and now they've lost everything," he explained.
Following former Council of State member Togbe Afede's decision to refuse nearly 300,000 cedis granted to him after sitting on the National Council of State between 2017 and 2020, the issue of ex-gratia has reappeared.
Following that, social media users praised the Paramount Chief for refusing to accept the ex-gratia payment.
Netizens thanked him for safeguarding the public purse and considering the country's growth and development.
The tweethearts praised him as a "man of integrity" and encouraged other public officials to follow in his footsteps.
In four years, the renowned leader, according to the host of Metro TV's Good Evening Ghana show, barely attended 16 percent of Council of State sessions.
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