"False witness is always a symptom of weakness and lack of faith in one's own reasoning.
Just as freedom results from the truth, violence results from falsehood. Bearing false witness has its murderous logic.
It leads from democratic debate to a cold civil war; it turns a partner into an adversary and an adversary into a deadly enemy.
The language of false witness is a way of dehumanising an adversary.
False witness is a sin against a fellow man and a blasphemy against God.
It is also a capital sin against our profession".
Last week Tuesday, November 4, 2025, the Rt Honourable Speaker of Parliament, invited senior editors from all the media for a collaborative meeting with Parliament to strengthen democratic accountability and the rule of law to promote national development.
It was a very worthwhile engagement but time did not allow for comprehensive exchange of viewpoints, although the Speaker and both the Majority and Minority leaders emphasised the need for a well-trained media to support the other arms of government to build open, transparent and sustainable progress and growth.
They emphasised the need for the state to provide capacity for the media as the Fourth Estate of the realm and applauded the media for sustaining and strengthening democracy, good governance and holding the government accountable.
Definitely as underlined by the Rt Honourable Alban Sumani Kingsford Bagbin, Parliament or the Legislature is the foundation and bedrock of democracy.
Therefore, it is imperative for the media to support the Legislature to help strengthen its law-making responsibility as well as its oversight over Executive authority.
Control
But until about a generation from 1992 under the Fourth Republic, many of our citizens lived under dispensations where the Executive took over control of legislative functions and operated with the Judiciary.
The concomitant is that some people do not value the Legislature as the most critical of the three arms of government.
That is why some of us have consistently decried the granting of loans to MPs to acquire means of transport whilst none speaks against members of the Executive being provided official vehicles.
There is the constitutional obligation which insists that majority of cabinet ministers must be MPs, a development which has been extended beyond the wildest imagination to include appointment to boards of directors, as a tool of patronage but creating a situation which sometimes denies the House the privilege of having the required number of members to deal with issues at all times.
The Centre for Democratic Development Ghana (CDD Ghana) has consistently spoken against the tendency of MPs serving as members of boards of state institutions and condemned it as not conducive to good governance.
The recent discussions about the rot at the Electricity Company of Ghana, where the former Majority Leader now Minority Leader, Hon Osahene Afenyo-Markin, was the chairman of the board, must be a reminder of how the integrity of Parliament could be indirectly harmed when MPs serve on boards, where management could withhold certain information from the notice of boards.
Recently the Majority Leader bemoaned the situation where members serving on boards attend board meetings and are absent from Parliament.
Whilst as board members they continue to serve the nation, they are absent from the House and it is only in situations where they are critically needed to perform certain duties because numbers become critical to give meaning to rules and regulations they are summoned under emergency to be present in the chamber.
The Majority Leader tried in a spirited effort to resist any claim that members are not regular in the House by providing data on attendance and explained that apart from serving on boards, others travel outside and within the country for legislative functions.
But, it is within Parliament to refuse to allow MPs to serve on boards and explain which MPs are working for the Legislature outside the Chamber.
When I was active in service I did a lot of advocacy that MPs must be better remunerated than Ministers of State.
What is baffling is that whereas the President determines the remuneration of the hierarchy of Parliament, the Justices of the Superior Courts of Judicature and other constitutional bodies, Parliament is charged to determine the remuneration packages of the President, Vice-President, Ministers, Deputy Ministers and Chairman and members of the Council of State.
The hitch, however, is that it must be based on the report of the committee appointed by the President on the advice of the Council of State, to make recommendations on salaries and allowances for Article 71 office holders
Why should the President be the one to appoint the committee to make recommendations on the salaries and allowances payable and the facilities and the privileges available to himself, the hierarchy of Parliament, the Superior Courts of Judicature and constitutional bodies when Parliament has a role to play?
Can Parliament design its own formula for determining the conditions of the Executive and Council of State? Can Parliament reject the recommendations of the committee and what about the President if he is displeased with the recommendations?
How do we get our people to understand that Parliament is the most critical institution to democratic and accountable governance when MPs willingly play subservience to the Executive even when that has implications for the authority of Parliament and undermines good governance.
How do we support Parliament when MPs demonstrate that their allegiance is more to the Executive and the leadership of their political parties than their constituents?
In the case of the New Patriotic Party, when more than two-thirds of its MPs asked that the Minister of Finance, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, be removed, they capitulated after Executive intervention.
Both the National Democratic Congress and the NPP MPs could only make muted noises when the parties ousted and replaced their leadership without their participation.
More Ghanaian
When an MP stands up to speak and tells counterparts that they do not deserve to speak on the floor of Parliament because their government could not do what they are asking to be done, do they consider their constituents to be more Ghanaian than the constituents of the other members they seek to silence and cow into submission?
And is our Parliament divided into Government and Opposition as in a Parliamentary government or in our case there is an Executive President with Majority and Minority groups in Parliament?
How would Parliament gain the support of the media or any other group, unless party loyalist, when an MP stands up on the floor of Parliament and argue that the government must act in a certain manner because when the members on the other side were in the Minority, they insisted that the Majority should carry out a certain act, which the Majority then declined because it was considered not to be expedient, as a functional policy?
Or how does Parliament seek to win the trust and support of the media or civil society organisations when an MP stands up on the floor of the House to demand that criminal investigations be conducted against the Secretary to a former President because he wrote a letter to Parliament to direct a certain cause of action ultra vires?
Last Wednesday, I listened to Hon Dominic Nitiwul, for eight years, Minister of Defence, that means a very rich experience in defence matters. Initially he took the path of popular partisan babble and asked that the government act on the menace of galamsey as they demanded from the New Patriotic Party.
However, when he decided to leave the babble and talk as a representative of the people, he made reference to the mob action and other developments at Hwidiem in the Ahafo Region, allegedly influenced and stimulated by two MPs.
He said instructively that it was not strategic to let military personnel undertake such operations in small numbers otherwise the unfortunate but gruesome murder of Major Mahama could be repeated at the peril of the nation. He pointed out that under his administration, the military did not send out any anti-galamsey operation of less than 100 personnel.
When his brother from the other side stood up to talk, I thought he would comment about the suggestion on the operational numbers since if the NAIMOS personnel were many at Hwidiem, the MP-led rapturous mob could not have compelled the release of the suspects who were orderly and peacefully arrested and brought to the police station as it happened.
Rather, he repeated the mantra that the Minority have no moral right to criticise the government and that there would be no state of emergency now or at anytime as if he is the President and his constituents matter more in deliberations about fighting galamsey than the constituents of Hon Nitiwul.
By all means the media and all groups interested in good governance, transparent democracy, the rule of law and due process, need to appreciate Parliament, but members of the Legislature must take the lead so that all others offer their unflinching and unqualified support, Whenever the Legislature is subservient and subordinated to the Executive, democracy, the rule of law and due process suffer.
Our MPs, honourable as they are described, must learn to be assertive and give meaning to separation of powers and Parliamentary independence, so that when we support them, we would not be following leaders who would surrender their mandate and our sovereignty to an Executive.
