The Member of Parliament for Adansi Asokwa, KT Hammond, is accusing the Speaker of Parliament of bullying minority lawmakers in the House. According to him, the Speaker, Edward Doe Adjaho and his Deputy, Ebo Barton Odro, have in recent times been intimidating minority MPs who rise to contribute to discussions in Parliament. Speaking on the Point Blank segment on Eyewitness News, KT Hammond stated that the two leaders of Parliament are treating them like “school kids.”
“There is a bigger picture that is manifesting itself in Parliament now; we are being bullied by the speakers. I don’t think it is right, we are not babies. We are being treated like school kids. It is not fair,” he lamented. Background Mr. Hammond made the claims in relation to his recent clash with Doe Adjaho when he [Mr. Hammond] made a supposed damning comment about the President’s State of the Nation Address.
The Adansi Asokwa MP said, “the president is entitled to his optical illusion” for stating that some road projects in his constituency were progressing steadily which he thought was not the case, but the Speaker asked him to withdraw the statement. The MP on Eyewitness News recounted how the Speaker of Parliament had described his comment as a “loose talk” saying it was “unparliamentary” for Doe Adjaho to use such words on him. “I haven’t seen anything like this in my life in the years that I have been in Parliament. Speakers don’t behave like this. I’m very serious to the extent that our main speaker, Doe Adjaho said that what I was talking about was loose talk.
The other one, Honorable Barton Odro also challenged my colleague Asiamah when he presented a set of documents.” “What did I do wrong? I’m not sure I did anything wrong. When you become a speaker, you eschew all your political inclinations, ideologies and play a neutral referee role. Our speaker I think sometimes forgets that he is a Speaker and thinks maybe he is still the MP for Ave-Avenor because plainly what the Speaker is doing and the insult that he heaped on us the other day was breathtaking,” he lamented.
