The Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Majority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, has welcomed the improved security for legislators following the murder of Ekow Quansah Hayford, the Mfantseman MP.
Speaking on Eyewitness News, Mr. Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu said the Interior Minister, a fellow legislator, was in agreement that MPs deserved more protection.
“It shouldn’t take another life for us to say that enough is enough, and he [Ambrose Dery] felt that between now and the conduct of the election, Members of Parliament should be provided some form of security.”
Two hundred police officers are to be deployed to serve as guards of MPs under the Parliamentary Protection Unit until the end of 2020.
Under the new arrangement, every MP will be entitled to a police officer as a bodyguard.
The Minister of Parliamentary Affairs does not, however, think this move should be considered as a selfish initiative for MPs.
“I don’t think it is self-serving. How many Members of Parliament may have to lose their lives? Shall we be happy if tomorrow, we wake up to see another Member of Parliament murdered in cold blood?”
He argued further that MPs are “assets to the country” and thus deserve extra protection.
“The Member of Parliament also has huge investments made in them by the state.”
Mr. Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, however, agreed that security needed to be improved for all citizens.
“The ultimate should be to improve the security in the entirety of the country and maybe the soonest we can do that the better it will be for all of us.”
Bureau of Public Safety’s reaction
Responding to the development, the Executive Secretary of the Bureau of Public Safety, Nana Yaw Akwada, said he was incensed by the decision to offer extra protection to MPs.
He feels it sends the wrong signal to Ghanaians given the lives lost in similar violent crimes.
Mr. Akwada further warned that this move “reduces National Security, which aims at providing security for the general population, to retail security on offer for politicians and men of power and by so doing, he has left the ordinary Ghanaian to a vulnerable state.”
He insists that offering special treatment to MPs also “threatens our democratic experiment.”
