Deputy Minority Leader, Patricia Appiagyei has defended Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin’s refusal to vacate his seat in Ghana’s ECOWAS Parliament delegation, insisting that he was not defying Parliament but fulfilling his constitutional duty to resist an illegal and internationally unlawful resolution.
Speaking at a press conference on Friday, November 28, 2025, Appiagyei described the parliamentary resolution passed on July 22, 2025, which removed Afenyo-Markin from the delegation, as “constitutionally perverse,” “internationally unlawful,” and void from the moment it was adopted.
She explained that the resolution, moved by Majority Leader Mahama Ayariga, directly violated Article 18 of the ECOWAS Supplementary Act A/SA.1/12/16, which allows a representative’s mandate to end only through death, written resignation, certified incapacity, or a decision of the ECOWAS Parliament itself, none of which applied to Afenyo-Markin.
Drawing on the ancient legal principle “Lex iniusta non est lex” (an unjust law is no law at all), Appiagyei argued that Articles 1, 3 and 41 of the 1992 Constitution place a clear obligation on every citizen, including MPs, to resist any act that undermines the Constitution or Ghana’s binding international treaties.
“The Minority Leader was not being insubordinate. He was not bringing Parliament into disrepute. He was being a patriot,” she stated.
“When a resolution clashes with both the Constitution and regional law that has supremacy under Article 75, obeying it would be a betrayal of the Republic. Resisting it is not merely a right, it is a duty.”
The Deputy Minority Leader revealed that she herself was pulled into the controversy without consent when the Majority attempted to insert her name as Afenyo-Markin’s replacement.
She recalled rejecting the move in writing on the same day and again on August 4, warning that it would cause public embarrassment to Parliament. Despite her protests, Speaker Alban Bagbin forwarded her name to ECOWAS, triggering an unprecedented diplomatic rebuke.
On September 8, 2025, ECOWAS Parliament Speaker Memounatou Ibrahima dispatched a Parliamentary Diplomacy Mission to Accra to address Ghana’s “flagrant violation” of regional rules, a humiliation that forced the Majority Leader into damage-control correspondence.
Appiagyei accused the Speaker and Majority Leader of now using the Privileges Committee referral as political revenge, particularly because the petition was filed one day after Afenyo-Markin led the Minority in exposing irregularities during the vetting of a Chief Justice nominee.
“The real contempt of Parliament is not Afenyo-Markin defending the Constitution,” she charged.
“It is the Speaker and Majority Leader crafting an illegal resolution, misleading an international body, embarrassing Ghana before ECOWAS, and then punishing the one person who had the courage to stand firm.”
She warned that if upholding the Constitution is now treated as contempt, “then every patriotic Ghanaian should be ready to be held in contempt by this Speaker and this Majority.”
“History will remember Alexander Afenyo-Markin not as someone who broke parliamentary rules, but as a fearless defender of the Constitution and the rule of law. We stand with him today, tomorrow, and always,” she affirmed the support of the Caucus behind for their leader.