The Speaker of Parliament, Rt Hon. Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, has ruled that the controversial Anti-LGBTQ+ Bill must be reintroduced in the current 9th Parliament, as all unfinished business from the 8th Parliament expired with its dissolution.
His ruling ends days of confusion and disagreement among Members of Parliament over whether the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, popularly known as the Anti-LGBTQ+ Bill, could proceed without fresh parliamentary action.
Addressing the House, Mr Bagbin was unequivocal that parliamentary business does not carry over from one term to another, stressing that the 8th Parliament and all its pending bills are now “history”.
“The eighth Parliament is history. So are all the businesses that were pending in the eighth Parliament. They all ended with the eighth Parliament, and so we have a new Parliament — the ninth Parliament. Therefore, what was pending there came to an end and has to be reintroduced,” he declared.
The Speaker’s ruling directly counters the argument by the Majority Leader, who had claimed that the bill was already passed by the 8th Parliament and did not need to be re-tabled.
Mr Bagbin clarified that while the bill had indeed been transmitted to the Presidency for assent, former President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo declined to sign it into law — and, in doing so, committed a constitutional oversight.
“They wrote to tell us that they would not assent to it. The only constitutional error they committed was that they didn’t give us reasons why they would not assent to it, and they did not transmit the bill back to us. They imprisoned it there,” he said.
The Speaker further noted that the 9th Parliament now holds the authority to take back and reprocess the bill, which began as a private member’s initiative sponsored by a bipartisan group of MPs with strong backing from traditional, religious, and civil society leaders.
“As you would recall, that’s a private member’s bill, and so members of this House took it up. It went through the whole process as detailed in our Standing Orders. But as it went through, the new government indicated that they wanted to take it as a public bill. I personally disagreed and made it known to His Excellency the President that this was an initiative of our people,” Mr Bagbin stated.
He emphasised that before the bill can be re-laid before Parliament, he must fulfil all procedural requirements outlined in the Standing Orders.
“Our rules have given what the Speaker is expected to do, which I will do before it can be laid in the House,” he assured.
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