UK parliament to meet Ghana’s Constitutional and Legal Committee over the anti-LGBTQI bill
The United Kingdom’s Parliament is scheduled to meet their counterparts from the Ghanaian legislature who are members of the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs committee today 13th June 2022 over the much talked about anti-gay bill as well as another human rights bill.
The invitation to Ghana’s lawmakers was revealed by the chair of the committee Kwame Anyimadu-Antwi in an interview on Accra-based TV3 on Saturday, June 11.
“One is the death penalty in Ghana. You will realize that when you are convicted of a murder you have to be killed by hanging but no president, to the best of my knowledge, had appended his signature for the person to be killed. Even though they are convicted to prison and then they go to condemn prison and it remains there. Now, the argument, and this is initiated by one of the Members of Parliament, Honourable Francis Sosu, MP for Madina, that we must scrap this from our statutory books.
“It is one of the subjects that we have to deal with. Amongst other things, we have to meet Ghana Mission and then we also discuss this LGBTQ. Particularly, I am interested in it because we have a law, that emanated from our colonial masters in our static books which says that unnatural carnal knowledge is an offence but they happen to pass the LGBTQ, they are not in favour of it. We are seeking to pass a bill that will go against that. How did they get there? I will be interested to know.
“The invitation came to the Speaker and the Speaker forwarded it to the Committee. Four members of the committee including myself and the ranking member will be attending this important meeting. We take off on Sunday, we were supposed to have gone today but because of flight arrangement we will go on Sunday so we walk into the meeting Monday morning and by Wednesday we are done,” he said.
Currently, before Parliament, the anti-LGBTQI bill is being promoted by Ningo-Prampram lawmaker Samuel Nartey George and some of his colleague legislators.
The controversial bill has divided opinion in Ghana.
While some, particularly the religious and traditional groupings, supported the Bill and were hopeful of its passing, others say it could incur the wrath of the international community against Ghana.
