“I think it was incumbent on the Speaker to ensure that he stood down Parliament to look into the procedural matters raised by the opposition. How can you deny hearing from the opposition?”
These were the words of Leader of National Grand Coalition (NGC) party in Parliament, Hon. Dr. Kandeh Kolleh Yumkella (KKY). He was making his own contribution at yesterday Monday 19th April, 2021emergency meeting of Parliament, held at the Bintumani conference Center, Aberdeen in Freetown.
Abass Chernor Bundu, the current Speaker of the House of Sierra Leone House of Parliament
According to Hon. KKY, it is wrong for the leadership of Parliament to simply believe that it can just seek compliance on bills tabled in Parliament without MPs engaging in debating and making recommendations on bills before they are passed into law. He informed the House that it does not bode well to force anything through Parliament once a bad law has been rushed and passed into law, it can be used in by bad leaders in the future. He described the country’s democracy as “being under threat” adding that denying the opposition the floor is a threat to democracy.
He noted that there are several other important matters currently before Parliament such as the Cybercrime Bill and several others that need the attention of Members of Parliament before passed into law.
He mentioned that all he is seeing now is a parliament leadership engaged in bulldozing the general membership into compliance. He added that the least the Speaker of Parliament could have done was to have informed MPs about what they would be deliberating instead of attempting to force a bill through Parliament.
Leader of the C4C party in Parliament made similar sentiments in line with Hon. KKY.
Credit: Owl Newspaper
I am not surprised. This is the second time in three years that we have seen such disgraceful senses in Parliament. Legislators behaving dis honourably is not a good lesson for our children. Seems the Speaker is at ODDS with himself and perhaps he was thikking in line with the TITLE of his book “DEMOCRACY BY FORCE” he wrote in at the end of the 11 years long punishing unnecessary war.
Lets pray for the future of our country.