Minority walks out from Parliament

The Minority in Parliament on Friday staged a walk- out when the National Reconciliation Bill was being taken through the consideration stage, where amendments were being made to it.

The Majority defeated the proposals the Minority made about the composition of the commission, which they said should include a representation of the Danquah-Busia tradition, the Nkrumah tradition, the Rawlings tradition, the Ghana Journalists Association, the Christian Council and the Muslim Council among other groups.

The Majority and the Minority were divided on the period of the coverage of the Bill, the Minority saying they wanted it to begin from March 6, 1957 to January 6, 1993, while the Majority wanted it restricted to only the period of unconstitutional regimes.

Alhaji Muhamad Mumuni, Ranking Member, Committee on Legal Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs, wanted to make a statement on the issue but the First Deputy Speaker, Mr Freddie Blay, who was in the Chair overruled him. In reaction, the Minority staged a walk out.

Mr Mumuni in a statement said the Minority had noted: "With utter disappointment the trend in the consideration of the National Reconciliation Bill, particularly the decision that had just been taken to restrict the remit of the National Reconciliation Commission to only the periods of unconstitutional rule in our nation's political history."

He said the general view of Ghanaians as expressed by respectable individuals, chiefs, civil society organisations and experts was that the time frame for national reconciliation should be March 6, 1957 to January 6, 1993.

He said the overwhelming view at an international conference on national reconciliation organized by the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development and the Civil Society Coalition in June was that the time frame for the commission's work should cover that period.

"The time frame for examining cases of abuses and injustices should not be too restrictive to be construed as overly selective and targeting people.

"The unabashed conviction of the Minority was that the criteria of all inclusiveness both in terms of space and time was a sine qua non for achieving genuine and sincere reconciliation by ensuring widespread acceptance and ownership of the reconciliation process by the largest segment of the Ghanaian.

"It must also inspire confidence in the integrity and credibility of the process." He expressed regret that "to expend so much energy, time and scarce national resources on an enterprise, which is predictably a grand fiasco is tantamount to the dissipation of the tax payers' toil and sweat and inexcusable.

"We in the Minority in this respect cannot countenance this. Therefore, we wish to state that we shall take no further part in the consideration of this instant bill," he added. The Majority, however, continued to sit.