Experienced MPs Losing their Seats is bad for Governance – Majority Leader

Majority Leader in parliament Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu has expressed worry over the unseating of some experienced legislators in the just-ended New Patriotic Party (NPP) Parliamentary Primaries.

He bemoaned that the loss of these experienced Members of Parliament (MPs) will affect parliamentary work, and consequently, governance.

 According to Osei Kyei Mensa-Bonsu, it takes years to build experienced parliamentarians and it worrying that the legislative house continues to lose such people.

He was commenting on the shocking party parliamentary loss of Ben Abdallah Banda -Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee – and Dr Assibey-Yeboah who is the Chairman of the Finance Committee of Parliament.

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“We can’t go on like this,” Mr Mensah-Bonsu told TV3 Ashanti Regional correspondent William Evans-Nkum Monday.

“Building the capacity of a Member of Parliament is not a four-year matter; it is not even an eight-year matter. The axiom is that in parliament, the longer a person stays the better he becomes,” he argued.

Asked why the NPP did not protect such experienced parliamentarians considering their impact in parliament, the Suame MP said the constitution of the party made that impossible and that it will only take dialogue for such issues to be resolved.

“For now there are constitutional issues to contend with. It provides [after] every four-year tenure the party should provide for the participation of all who desire to be in parliament so in that regard it becomes difficult in the face of the constitutional provisions to prevent people from coming to contest,” he indicated.

The Saturday’s primary in over 100 constituencies saw 40 incumbent MPs losing their seats to newbies.