Let Ghana guide our relationship – Akufo-Addo tells new Speaker after shock win
President Nana Akufo-Addo faces a political nightmare as the Ghanaian leader has to deal with a highly polarised legislature headed by a speaker from an opposition party.
But he says the supreme interest of Ghanaians will guide the relationship between him and the Speaker, Alban Kingsford Sumani Bagbin.
“This is the first time in the life of this republic the president from one party will be obliged by the exigencies of the moment and the will of the people to work in all sincerity and cooperation with the speaker of parliament from another party,” he said in his inaugural speech on Thursday.
In a parliament sharply divided between the country’s two main parties –the National Democratic Congress and the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the president said he would count on the politics of cooperation to move the country forward.
Mr Bagbin election was unexpected. Ghana’s longest-serving MP was put up by the NDC which has 137 parliamentarians with one, James Quayson, restrained from becoming MP. But he defied the court order and voted in the most competitive election to select a speaker in the history of the Fourth Republican parliaments.
It did not appear as though the NDC had the numbers but on the night in which Ghana’s parliament defied all their convention of civility, Mr Bagbin emerged winner beating the incumbent Speaker, Prof Mike Ocquaye.
But President Akufo-Addo is counting on his long-nurtured relationship with the man known in Ghana’s political circles as Nadowli/Kaleo Mugabe to push the country’s developmental agenda.
Mr Bagbin, the only man in Ghana’s history to be part of every parliament since 1992 was in the House with the President who represented the people Abuakwa from 1996 to 2008.
“I’m confident that both of us will be guided in our relationship and the supreme interest of our people in ensuring good governance in ordering the affairs of this great country.
“I want to assure you of my whole utter determination to work with you to advance the peace, progress and prosperity of the Ghanaian people,” the President assured the man who has gone through the legislative mill from a common floor member in 1992 to the Second Deputy Speaker in the 7th Parliament.
The President also had some kind words for his former peer who has become the country’s third most powerful man.
“Nearly three decades of devoted service to Parliament by you has culminated in this moment which has seen your elevation to the third great office of the state. Together, you and I will be chartering new territory in the governance and politics of the Fourth Republic,” the President said.