LawyersOpinion
Private Member’s Bills: Key to parliamentary effectiveness
The authors highlight the nature and prospects of the enactment of Private Member’s Bills in Ghana and lay out some of the current efforts initiated by Parliament to consolidate the 2020 feat
Parliament is said to be the sanctum sanctorum of the temple of democratic edifice the world over. The integral role that Parliaments play in the governance of modern democratic states cannot be discounted. In democratic states, the powers of government are often distributed among the Executive to exercise executive power: the Judiciary to exercise judicial power: and the Legislature for the exercise of legislative power. Of these organs, it is Parliament that bears the direct and vast representational mandate. Ghana’s governance architecture reflects this governance model.
Like other Parliaments, our Parliament synthesizes and synchronizes the diverse interests of the population to contribute significantly to good governance and sustainable development of our country. Law-making is one of the ways by which the House discharges this mandate. The House continues to excel in this endeavour. Until December 2020, the Executive body introduced all Bills passed by the House. The jinx, however, was broken in December 2020 when the first Private Member’s Bill passed into law
