Speaker Declares Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu As Majority Leader
The Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin has ruled that the New Patriotic Party’s Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu is the Majority Leader.
Consequently, the National Democratic Congress’ Haruna Iddrisu is Minority Leader.
This comes exactly one week after the Speaker declared that the NPP Caucus and the Independent MP for Fomena constituency constitute the majority group in Parliament.The declaration, however, did not settle the leadership argument as the NDC refused to be addressed as the minority in Parliament, arguing that both political parties in the 8th Parliament have an equal number of seats.Citing the standing orders of the House on Friday, Mr Bagbin emphasized that since Mr Kyei Mensah Bonsu heads the majority group in Parliament he must be addressed accordingly.
“The standing orders further provides that, the majority group will be led by a leader and that leader is referred to as the Majority Leader. And order 168 demands that the business committees and the House committees are headed by the Majority Leader.
“That is the standing orders we have now and I am bound by them. So please stop confusing the public,” he said.
“The Honourable Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu is the Majority MP and the Honourable Haruna Iddrisu is the Minority Leader,” Bagbin declared.
Mr Bagbin further emphasised that Mr Kyei Mensah leads the majority group and not caucus.
Explaining that the term caucus “refers to an identified group of people. So we can have a regional caucus, we can have a gender caucus and a Catholic caucus.
“But we have parliamentary parties. And for us in the 8th Parliament, we have two parties; NDC Parliamentary Party and the NPP Parliamentary Party with the one independent and they form the majority parliamentary group. I do not want any more confusion on this.”