The criticism for government to confer national honours on the Speaker of Parliament, Rt. Hon. Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, has been stoked once more, this time, by a group in the Western region.

According to the Western Patriots (W.P.), the reason why the current government and its predecessor have not conferred the national honours on Speaker Bagbin is that, they do not respect the Ghanaian people whose mandate they exercise.

“We, the people of this country have called for, and continue to call for the conferment of national honours on our beloved speaker, but the governments that we elect into office have refused and continue to refuse,” Mr. Emmanuel Ghansah, spokesperson for the group, explained.

He continues, “What this shows is that, these politicians and the governments that they form do not respect us the people, the source of the power and authority that they come to beg us at the end of every electoral cycle for.
Based in Takoradi, the Western regional capital, the group added its voice to calls for Speaker Bagbin to be given “what is really due to him.”

The call comes in the wake of accusations that the refusal by the current government and the previous Mahama government to confer the highest national honours on the Speaker is borne out of jealousy.

Last week, the Volta Youth for Truth in Politics (VYTP) released a scathing statement in which it said the current president, Akufo-Addo and his predecessor, John Mahama, and their governments have not conferred national honours on Bagbin because they are jealous of the Speaker and his outstanding track record in politics.

Speaker Bagbin, is the longest serving Parliamentarian in contemporary Ghana, being a veteran who started his Parliamentary career in 1992 when the Fourth Republic begun.

Indeed, it is fast becoming a phrase in Ghana politics that asking how old the Fourth Republic is, is one and the same as asking how long Bagbin has been in Parliament.

Interestingly however, the current government and the previous one have conferred national honours on almost all persons of some note but have somehow managed not to do same for Speaker Bagbin.

For sometime now, a clamour has been stirring up with those behind, demanding not less than the highest national honours, the order of the Volta for Bagbin.
“We add our voices to those agitating for the right thing to be done and demand that Rt. Hon. Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin should be given national honours because he deserves it more than most of the people who have been conferred honours,” Mr. Emmanuel Ghansah said on behalf of the group.

He adds, “We demand this in the exercise of our rights as citizens from whom the mandate to govern comes from.”