"Address me alone" - Speaker

Parliament reconvened on Tuesday amidst legal technicalities, partisan insinuations, hecklings and laughter with the Speaker, Mr Peter Ala Adjetey declaring that he was the only one to be addressed in the House as parliamentary practice demanded.

He said no other fellow should be recognised, acknowledged or addressed as protocol demanded even on ceremonial days in the House expect him.

He said by parliamentary practice it was only the Speaker, who should be addressed whether the person came by invitation or was there in his or her official capacity.

Mr Ala Adjetey made the declaration when a thunderous applause greeted the Minority Leader, Mr Alban Bagbin's opening speech in which he acknowledged the presence of the members of the Council of State, the Diplomatic Corps and chiefs, who were invited to witness the opening of the first meeting of the second session of the Third Parliament of the Fourth Republic.

The ovation came from the Minority because the Majority Leader, Papa Owusu-Ankomah, who spoke first before Mr Bagbin did not observe those protocols.

The Minority thought their leader had scored a political point over his opponent, which made the Majority uncomfortable and Mr Sampson K. Boafo, Ashanti Regional Minister, promptly leapt to his feet on a point order.

Mr Boafo drew the Speaker's attention to the fact that all those in the House were strangers and that by parliamentary practice they needed not to be recognised as such and that it was only the Speaker that members should address.

The Speaker upheld the point of order and said he had given an earlier ruling on a similar issue when the President John Agyekum Kufuor presented the State of the Nation Address to Parliament last year and was accused of not addressing those present in the House.

Mr Adjetey said he ruled in that case that the President was "impeccably right" in not addressing strangers to the House. He said constitutionally the President cannot participate in the work of the House but the Vice President has the right to take part in the deliberations of the Legislature but only that he could not vote.

With that ruling, Mr Bagbin threw the House into a further uproar when he said he was welcoming the NPP into government after being in the "political wilderness" for 29 years. The Speaker had earlier said in his opening address that the NPP had been in that state for that period.

The Speaker, however, refused to allow further point of orders from the Majority side and gave way to the Minority Leader to continue with his presentation at the end of which his side stood up and gave him ovation.

Earlier, Mr Adjetey inspected a guard of honour mounted at the forecourt of Parliament by a detachment of the Ghana Police made up of 60 men and three officers under the command of Deputy Superintendent of Police Mr Nelson Senu while the Police Band under the command of Chief Superintendent of Police

Charles Nimako provided music.

The Speaker's inspection of the guard was a novelty in the parliamentary history of the country since no such officer of the Legislature had ever undertaken that venture.