Executive Director for the Parliamentary Network Africa, Samuel Obeng, has predicted parliamentary procedures would be mostly tense following developments in parliament over the 2022 budget.
He mentioned that, both the Majority and Minority in Parliament have adopted some parliamentary technicalities to their own benefit, of which he believes would later be harmful to the house and the country as a whole.
Mr. Obeng suggested the best approach to resolve the brouhaha was for both sides of Parliament to collectively and comprehensively sort out the relevant issues raised.
During an interview with Samuel Eshun on the Happy Morning, he said, “What seems to be happening lately in Parliament around the budget is that, both sides of the house have taken applied technicalities of Parliamentary works to have their way, instead of collectively coming together to address the issues comprehensively. In the end, it would all come back to bite Parliament quite harshly going forward. After the events that unfolded on Friday, we expected both sides to reach a consensus but unfortunately that didn’t happen.
The Majority side met after the rejection of the budget, of course to throw away the previous decision. They essentially took a new decision which is to approve the budget, which meant there would be some sort of reactions from the Minority side of Parliament. So yesterday’s Minority press conference signaled what they plan to do now that in their opinion, the budget was bulldozed through and that includes the fact that they would eventually make parliamentary work difficult for the government.”
According to Samuel Obeng, the intention of the Minority to call out the numbers and head count for every issue that is presented on the floor of Parliament before a decision is taken would heavily cause frustrations to government businesses.
“I think this could have been avoided if the two sides had reached a consensus. Well this did not happen and I fear in the coming days, it would be problematic,” he added.
Samuel Obeng is the Executive Director for the Parliamentary Network Africa, a civil society parliamentary monitoring organization working to promote open parliaments in Africa. He is also a parliamentary practices and procedures specialist with many years of experience working with Parliaments and parliamentary monitoring organizations across Africa.
By: Jude Tackie
