Parliament is bloated, we can do with maximum 200 MPs – Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu

The Majority Leader wants the number of MPs capped

He is of the view the House needs maximum 200 lawmakers

Majority Leader and Minister of Presidential Affairs, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu has stated that Ghana’s legislature has more lawmakers than required in his opinion.

Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu adds that the country can do with 200 Members of Parliament lamenting how increments of the numbers have been tainted with political considerations.

He was responding to a question about how the House as presently constituted has an odd number of MPs, that is 275.

“Samson (Lardy Anyenini) you know my position on this, the last time the number (of MPs) was increased to 275 I disagreed because I don’t know of any established democracy anywhere in the world where at the conclusion of any census or 10 years thereafter the number of seats in Parliament have to be increased.

“That is why I have insisted that perhaps we could have lived with the 140, it was increased to 200 just before the commencement of the fourth Republican Parliament and thereafter got increased to 230 and to 275,” he added.

He proposed that when it is that a Constitutional Review is conducted, a cap on the number of lawmakers should be prioritized.

“I think we should bring this matter to a conclusion and I think that in the review of the Constitution, we should put a specified number that we can’t go beyond this number. I think that even with the 200 or the 140, I think we could live with that.

The eighth Parliament whose tenure started on January 7, 2021, has 275 MPs with the two representative parties – the ruling New Patriotic Party and National Democratic Congress – having 137 MPs apiece.

The sole independent lawmaker is MP for Fomena who chose to work with the NPP hence giving the NPP 138 MPs. Speaker Alban Bagbin pronounced earlier this year that that development made the NPP, the Majority Group not a Majority party.

He recently reiterated that the Parliament was a hang one and that there was no majority in the House. Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu issued a stern disagreement in a press conference to address the supposed rejection of the 2022 budget by Minority MPs after the Majority staged a walkout.