Samia to cause review of parliamentary standing orders

Accra, Feb. 27, GNA - Ms Samia Nkrumah, CPP Member of Parliament for Jomoro, on Thursday said she would submit to parliament proposals to review the House's standing orders, to allow other minority parties to express their independence in the house. Ms Nkrumah, who was speaking at a public lecture organized by the Greater Accra regional branch of the Convention People's Party (CPP) in Accra to mark the 43rd anniversary of the overthrow of Dr Kwame Nkrumah and to chart the way forward for the party, said the move was also to allow other minority parties to transact parliamentary business on their own.

Currently, parliament's standing orders allow members to either sit as majority or minority caucuses with all minority parties in parliament deciding to sit either among the largest minority party or the majority party when transacting business in the House. As the only parliamentarian on the ticket of the CPP, Ms Nkrumah said she wanted to sit alone in the house to enable her to express her independent thoughts on issues to reflect the position of the CPP as a party and the larger interest of Ghanaians.

She said Dr Nkrumah, the first President of Ghana and founder of the CPP, always espoused ideals of liberty, justice and unity, which were still relevant to the liberation of Ghanaians from their current economic woes, an ideology she wanted to pursue vigorously. Ms Nkrumah pledged to work to ensure that the works and writings of Dr Nkrumah were available at all levels for everyone to read and understand Nkrumaism, to prevent attempts by anti-Nkrumaists to distort the history of Ghana and her independence struggle.

She called on the CPP to "go to the people, eat with the people, live with the people, love the people and above all listen to the people" as a way to rejuvenate the party and make it an alternative for winning the political mandate of Ghanaians. Dr Maxwell Thomas Aidoo, a Lecturer at the Institute of African Studies of the University of Ghana, said the overthrow of Dr Nkrumah was the cause of the economic stagnation of the country. Dr Aidoo said the coup disturbed the people-centred and people-generated development agenda of the country and made western powers owners of the economy. He called for the proper democratization of the country to allow the citizenry to wield more powers as against the current practice which gives the president more powers than the people.