Trading Blows in Parliament: What Legislative Violence Means for Ghana’s Democracy

Maame Efua Addadzi-Koom & Kwadwo Bioh Agyei

Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology

Introduction 

On the day of their inauguration on 7 January 2021, members of Ghana’s 8th Parliament under the Fourth Republic threw punches and exchanged blows in the chamber. It was the first time such violence had occurred in Ghana’s Parliament. Little did Ghanaians know that the parliamentary brawl would become the first of several rancorous legislative deliberations that would take place that year. By December 2021, Ghana had recorded three violent incidents on the floor of parliament. 

In January 2023, Ghana will celebrate 30 years of uninterrupted constitutional democracy – a mark that calls for reflecting on the nation’s constitutional journey. We reflect in this post on the impact that the three incidents of legislative violence in 2021 have on Ghana’s democracy going forward. 

The 8th Parliament was a hung Parliament, the first of its kind under the Fourth Republic. Of the 275 parliamentary seats, the two main political parties – the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the opposition, National Democratic Congress (NDC) – have 137 each. One independent candidate has decided to align with the NPP, giving them a slight majority in Parliament. 

The Three Incidents of Legislative Violence 

The legislative violence on 7 January 2021 (inauguration violence) erupted over controversies regarding how the Speaker of Parliament should be voted for: whether by a secret ballot or an open vote. Punches were thrown, slaps were given, voting booths were kicked, ballot papers were snatched, and violent words were exchanged. In the end, a secret ballot led to the election of the Speaker, who, to the disappointment of the ruling party, was from the opposition caucus. 

On 1 December 2021, the second violent incident in Parliament (the budget violence) occurred following a controversial rejection of the national budget by the opposition NDC when the ruling NPP walked out of parliament, and the subsequent reversal by the NPP side on another date when the NDC side boycotted the sitting. 

The third violence incident (e-levy violence) occurred on 20 December 2021 over a purported attempt by the presiding deputy Speaker to vote on whether an Electronic Transactions Bill should be considered under a certificate of emergency. 

We have extensively examined the violent incidents, their determinants, significance and justifiability elsewhere by drawing from Gandrud's “credible commitment problems” framework and Spary’s treatise on the three debates of democratic theory. In this post, however, we discuss one positive and one negative impact of these incidents because we believe they stand out among several other implications. 

The Implications of the Violent Incidents in Parliament

One negative implication of the legislative violence incidents on Ghana’s democracy is the local and international reputational damage. Ghanaians who voted the members of parliament into office were disappointed in their elected representatives for their violent displays in Parliament. The last thing any democratic state would want is a legislature that has lost public trust, as mistrust in one institution could eventually affect trust in the entire democratic system. On the international front, a fighting Parliament is no good. Since Ghana is deemed the beacon of democracy in Africa, the legislative violence put that status in question. 

On the contrary, a favourable implication is that the violence signifies a breakaway of Parliament from its “yes-manship” to a hegemonic executive’s intrusion in its affairs. It speaks to a true reflection of the separation of powers in a developing democracy. In all Parliaments under the Fourth Republic, the ruling party has had a controlling majority - except for the 8th Parliament. The violence was partly due to the opposing party’s numerical strength in Parliament, which meant they were not simply going to rest on their oars and have the ruling party’s agenda shoved down their throats. Thus, while in the past, the executive had had an easy ride in pushing its agenda through Parliament, that was not to be the case in the 8th. There was now a strong opposition to resist. The resistance emerging from the three incidents shows that the legislature is finally living up to a sense of independence as an entity separate from the executive in its functioning, even though there is a hybrid membership between the two institutions. We are not endorsing violence in the chamber, as continued violence will have dire consequences, as we stated earlier. 

Concluding Remarks

For the past nearly three decades, Ghana has shown that democracy works and will continue to work effectively for other African governments if they work at it.. However, no democratic state is perfect, as in Ghana’s case, where legislative violence incidents occurred. Democracy thrives on a workable separation of powers especially where the executive and legislature do not interfere with each other’s functions. Where the other crosses the line, there is bound to be resistance which may escalate into violence that slowly chips away at democracy. 

Maame Efua Addadzi-Koom is a Law Lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana and a Research Associate at the Institute for African Women in Law, USA. 

Kwadwo Bioh Agyei is a Law Lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana and a private legal practitioner. 

Suggested citation: Maame Efua Addadzi-Koom and Kwadwo Bioh Agyei, ‘Trading Blows in Parliament: What Legislative Violence Means for Ghana’s Democracy’ IACL-AIDC Blog (15 December 2022) https://blog-iacl-aidc.org/new-blog-3/2022/12/15/trading-blows-in-parliament-what-legislative-violence-means-for-ghanas-democracy