Parliament Is The Weakest Arm Of Gov't

A political science lecturer of the University of Ghana, Dr Bossman Asare, describes the Parliament of Ghana as the weakest arm of government. The senior lecturer explains "for parliament I personally think that may be Ghanaians we are paying a whole lot of money when they are not in the position to check malfeasance in the way they should be able to do. So I think that of all the three institutions the weakest link is the legislature and because the legislature is not really active Ghanaians are not getting value for money". Dr. Asare was trying to explain to Roland Walker on the AM Talk why Ghanaians are stuck with the two main political parties- NPP and NDC. His comments come on the on back of recent internal party wrangling within the NPP and some agitations within the NDC as well. He says because parliament is a representation of all the people it is often as potent as the executive arm of government in a matured democracy. "We are practicing a system for the matured but we are not matured," he stressed. He was also of the mind that because Ghana is now trying to do what he calls �democratization�, so a lot of power is vested in the executive making our types of governance a form of dictatorship. He includes that the highly polarized media in the country has allowed political parties to get away with answering tough questions. He predicted that "until we get to that point the leaders will always take the people for granted". He also charged civil society to necessitate changes in the manner political parties operate by demanding more from people in government.