By Ragan M. Conteh

Political Analysts, who have been following Parliamentary proceedings as well as issues of governance in the country of recent years, have informed this medium that the Speaker of Parliament, Dr. Abass Chernor Bundu has over the years continued to beg for forgiveness for all the wrong doings in Parliament.

According to them, Dr. Bundu is on record to have turned to Sierra Leoneans in the gallery begging for forgiveness for the misbehavior of lawmakers in the fifth Parliament.

The analysts recalled that the parliamentarians during the tabling of the 2023 election Act, acted very strangely at the time where properties of the House were vandalized.

They went furthered that at the Bintumani Conference center, during the tabling of the Census Bill, the MPs also misbehaved which resulted to police entering the chamber and forcefully laid the bill.

They also cited that during the elections of the Speaker himself at the start of the fifth Parliament, MPs were very much angered and also fought resulting into police intervention.

Following those ugly developments, according to analysts the Speaker without fear or shame out rightly them and turned to members of the public and apologized.

They underscored that the recent fracas in Parliament is not an exception, where the disgraced Clerk of Parliament Hon. Paran Tarawally allegedly employed his wife and now paying the ultimate prize for the wrong doing.

They revealed that the Speaker has also been accused of sexual immorality by one online TV, an allegations he has already challenged with utmost seriousness.

In his recent press release, the Speaker, Dr. Abass Chernor Bundu opined without exaggeration that a lot has been said and written about Parliament in the past weeks and have continued unabated, but more particularly about him and the Clerk of Parliament.

For the Clerk, “we understand from the Commissioner of the Anti-Corruption Commission that his matter is still under investigation. Therefore the less said about it here, the better. We shall await the final outcome of the Commission’s investigation.”

He said concerning his own case, he must be allowed to make bold to say that a great deal of what has been said and written against him has been either misconceived or misunderstood for which he seized the opportunity to try to set the record straight.

Finally, he said, “let it be stated here loud and clear that the Speaker and the Clerk of Parliament are not at loggerheads with each other, as some unscrupulous and frivolous media might want you to believe,” Dr. Bundu stressed.

He made it clear that the Speaker is the Chairman of the Parliamentary Commission which he said is the highest decision-making body in Parliament, and the Clerk is the Secretary of the Commission.

Speaker Bundu maintained that the two of them have to work in harmony at all times for the successful deliberations of the Commission and have indeed been doing so since the beginning of the Fifth Parliament. He stressed that, but ultimately the Speaker bears the greatest responsibility for the Parliament as a whole while the Clerk is only the Head of the Parliamentary Service and the controller of the parliamentary purse.

“If there are differences between the Speaker and the Clerk, they are miniscule and by no means extraordinary for which no-one should attempt to build mountains out of a molehill,” he said.

He asked the parliamentarians to allow him to end his announcement with the assurance that this Sixth Parliament is moving forward inexorably because there are bigger and more formidable challenges ahead of all of them. “I hope this small word for the wise is sufficient for today,” he concluded.