Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu reiterates Majority’s position on rejection of 2022 budget as unconstitutional

Majority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu has reiterated that the rejection of the 2022 budget by Parliament, constituted only by members of the Minority, was unconstitutional.

He added that the rejection did not follow the standing orders of the House.

The Minority in Parliament on Friday, November 26, 2021 rejected the budget after the Majority staged a walk-out.

However, the Majority described the act as an illegality, stressing that it fell short of the constitutional requirement of 138 MPs present in the House before a decision can be made.

Speaking to the press shortly after Parliament has rescinded its decision to reject the 2022 budget, and approval of same on Tuesday, the Majority Leader noted that Speaker Alban Bagbin erred in supervising the rejection of the budget by the Minority-only Parliament.

Citing precedence set by the House in 2015 under the leadership of the then Speaker Edward Doe Adjaho, the Majority Leader said Speaker Alban Bagbin could have sought guidance from the precedence in the 6^th Parliament.

“Indeed this is not the first time the House is facing this problem. The Speaker should have followed the precedence set by his predecessors. When a similar issue arose in the 6^th Parliament on the 22^nd December, 2015, the then first Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Ebo Barton-Oduro after reading Order 109 of the standing orders ruled that the whole voting process was an exercise in futility.” He also cited a Supreme Court ruling of similar precedence.

He further defended his side’s approval of the budget stressing that the budget was passed with a properly constituted House.

“What we did today was to reinstate, so to speak, the original motion and have a properly constituted House take a vote on it. As you have seen, the decision is that we have approved of the motion moved by the Minister responsible for Finance who, representing the President, submitted to this House, the Budget Statement and Economic Policy of the government for the year ending December 31^st, 2022,” he told the press.

The budget was approved in the absence of MPs from the Minority, who declined to participate in the business of the day.

In their absence, the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta re-submitted the 2022 Budget, which was unanimously approved by the Majority MPs including the Speaker.