A former Deputy Attorney General Dr Dominic Ayine says it is important for the country to clearly define activities that constitute “proceedings of Parliament”.

The Bolga East MP said following the brouhaha between the Madina MP, Francis-Xavier Sosu and Ghana Police Service, the debate about Parliamentary privileges and proceedings needs to be re-defined.

“I think this debate has come at a very opportune time in our history as a constitutional democracy,” he told host of Newsfile Samson Lardy Ayenini, on Saturday.

There is an impasse between Parliament and the Police in which the Speaker refused to release the MP for police interrogations citing Parliamentary proceedings.

The Police are seeking to interrogate the Madina MP over what it describes as alleged involvement in the unlawful blockade of a road and the destruction of public property during a demonstration he led in his constituency.

The matter has led to a division between the majority and minority caucus in parliament taking different sides to the issue.

Commenting on the development, Dr Anyine said, “If I am in my constituency attending a funeral in my constituency and let’s say that I have committed an offence and the police come with a summon at the funeral to arrest me; the question would be whether or not I am attending the proceedings of Parliament.

“This is because the key criteria is proceedings of Parliament and this must be activities that are intimately connected to the functions of Parliament as a corporate body.”

But the Dean of UPSA Law School, Prof Abotsi, who was also on the show explained that the Ghana Police Service suffers a trust deficit from both the NDC and NPP leading to the undermining of its power of arrest.

He argued that “For a lot of the difficulties we have now, there is some reality we are all not talking about now, and that reality is a historical one. The Police suffer from a historical deficit of trust,”

Meanwhile, the Accra High Court has issued an arrest warrant for the police to effect the arrest of the Madina MP.

The embattled MP is supposed to show up in court to answer the charges on November 8, the Director General of the Police Public Affairs, ACP Kwasi Ofori, told JoyNews.