I failed to handle absenteeism as Speaker – Mike Oquaye
Former Speaker of Parliament, Professor Aaron Mike Oquaye has revealed that his biggest failure as a Speaker of Parliament was his inability to tackle how the Members of Parliament voted on issues.
Speaking to Alfred Ocansey on TV3’s Tonight Show, the former Speaker said “I did not really succeed in absenteeism”. He explained that he tried to stop it but stopped trying after some time. “I did not succeed in tackling it, I did not succeed in tackling punctuality. I did it a while and I stopped”.
He explained that when both Nana Akufo-Addo and John Mahama were contesting in 2020 for the Presidency, it was an opportunity for Parliament to bring out the records of how they voted on issues while they were Members of Parliament but the house did not have the records so it was not possible to project such statistics as was done for President Obama in the USA.
“I did not succeed in ensuring that there was even a record of how Members voted. Members must vote in a certain direction. We had two former Members of Parliament contesting for President: Mahama and Akufo-Addo,” he explained.
According to Prof Oquaye, in America “Obama’s record was brought out as a Senator. We do not have that here but it is also important to have these things because you want to know for example, if you want to be president what is your record on women? Your record on oil”.
