The election and swearing in of a personality to steer the affairs of the Sixth Parliament of the Fourth Republic is scheduled to take place on January 5, 2013, but who becomes the next Speaker of the House remains to be known.
The event will be a deviation from the past practice where the Speaker is elected and sworn in on January 7.
The departure has come about as a result of some provisions in the Presidential (Transition) Act, which stipulate that the Speaker of Parliament shall be elected two days before the inauguration of the new government on January 7.
Although the Speaker and members of the Sixth Parliament would be sworn in on January 5, they will begin their work on January 7 after the Fifth Parliament had been dissolved on January 6, 2013.
Time will, however, tell whether the current Speaker of Parliament, Mrs Joyce Adeline Bamford-Addo, will continue to do the job that she had been doing since January 7, 2009.
Names of individuals that have come up for the position include Mr Edward Doe Adjaho, the current First Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Mr Ken Dzirasah, a former First Deputy Speaker and Dr Obed Asamoah, a former Attorney General and Minister of Justice.
Mr Adjaho, an astute lawyer has had a successful career as a Member of Parliament for Avenor-Ave. He is currently is one of the only five MPs who have been in the House since Ghana returned to constitutional democracy in 1993.
As the First Deputy Speaker, he has had more time to assert himself on the job as a result of the enormous time Mrs Bamford-Addo had offered him to preside over the House.
National Democratic Congress MPs would not want to openly comment on the issues, but those who pleaded anonymity supported the candidature of Mr Adjaho who has been elected as the MP for the newly-created Akatsi South Constituency.
Should he be offered the job, constitutionally, he would have to vacate his position as an MP for a bye-election to be conducted in his constituency.
His last employment before being elected as an MP was in the Attorney-General's Department. Ken Dzirasah, on the other hand is a former MP for North Tongu and a former First Deputy Speaker of Parliament.
Currently, he is the Chairman of the Ghana Refugee Board.
Born in 1936, Dr Asamoah is an astute politician and a lawyer who served as an Attorney-General under Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings from 1981 to 1997. He was educated at the Kings College in London and at Columbia University.
Dr Asamoah was also a law lecturer at the University of Ghana, during which time some of his famous students were Mr Tsatsu Tsikata, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo and the late former President, Prof. John Evans Atta Mills.
He was also a former National Chairman of the NDC, but lost that position in 2006 and together with other disgruntled members of the party, formed the Democratic Freedom Party (DFP).
Dr Asamoah, together with the DFP returned to the NDC fold in 2011 and had since remained a committed member of the party.
All the three front runners for the speakership position are from the Volta Region.
One MP told this reporter that his colleagues would be more comfortable with their own, Mr Adjaho, since as one of the few longest serving MPs who has seen it all in the House, it would be appropriate to honour him with the position.
The question that comes to mind is the quest for the party to ensure gender balance in the sharing of leadership positions. Will it not, therefore, be appropriate if Mrs Bamford-Addo is replaced by a female? Since the inception of the Fourth Republic, Ghana has witnessed the swearing in of four speakers.
They were the late Mr Justice D. F. Annan (1994-2001), the late Mr Peter Ala Adjetey (2001-2005), Mr Ebenezer Begyina Sekyi-Hughes (2005-2009) and Mrs Joyce Adeline Bamford-Addo, 2009 to date.
It is clear that while Justice Annan had two terms under the NDC 1 administration, both Mr Peter Ala Adjetey and Mr Sekyi-Hughes enjoyed one term each in office under the NPP two-term rule. While the NPP refused to offer Mr Adjetey a second term in office, Mr Sekyi-Hughes could not have had a second chance since the NPP lost at the end of his first term as Speaker.
The big question now is whether Mrs Bamford-Addo will be offered a chance to head the country's legislature for the second time.
Insiders, however, told this reporter that Mrs Bamford-Addo is in a hurry to leave the seat after January 6, 2013 and live a quiet life afterwards. If that is true, then another big question is that who becomes the next Speaker of Parliament?.
Indications are that intense lobbying for the topmost position of the country's legislature began soon after the Chairman of the Electoral Commission, Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan pronounced President John Dramani Mahama as the winner of the 2012 presidential election
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