A ranking member of the privileges committee has said the Speaker of Parliament has the sole mandate to declare any seat in the House vacant
Kweku Ricketts-Hagan, a ranking member of the privileges committee of Parliament has said the seat of the MP for Dome-Kwabenya, Sarah Adwoa Safo has not been declared vacant.
This comes after reports suggested that the clerk of Parliament has been authorised to declare MP’s seat vacant after failing to appear before the privileges committee.
Addressing the media on Friday (15 July), Ricketts-Hagan said, “In the case of Adwoa Safo, we were not able to meet her. So the committee agreed not to make any decision on her and to refer the matter to the Speaker.”
“Yesterday there was an article… that the chairman of the committee had gone public to say that, the committee had declared Adwoa Safo’s seat vacant, and that the matter is being referred to the clerk to basically proceed to the EC.”
“First and foremost, nobody in this Parliament apart from the Speaker has the right to declare anybody’s seat vacant. That was not the job given to us; our job was to hear the three colleagues and to find out whether there was a reasonable or legitimate reason why they didn’t come to Parliament and report to the Speaker,” Ricketts-Hagan added.
