Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, has brought finality to the ongoing stalemate between the Minority and Majority in Parliament on the 2022 budget, setting three steps to be taken by Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta.
He has proposed to the Finance Minister to submit a revised 2022 Budget for consideration and adoption by the House to end the impasse.
He proposed the following when he returned to the House after a two-week medical review in Dubai:
- The Minister responsible for Finance comes before the House with an amended statement of the Budget with the said modifications and concessions.
- These modifications and concessions will then be adopted by the House and the revised document with the estimates will stand committed to the various Committees of Parliament.
“I am aware the Committees have begun consideration of the estimates. It would thus be their responsibility to reconcile the revised estimates with what they have hitherto considered and submit a report for the consideration of the House,” he stated.
He disclosed that the leadership of the House have agreed on these steps.
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Mr Bagbin made the suggestion in his first formal statement to the House on his return from a medical trip in Dubai on Thursday, December 16, 2021.
The Speaker’s proposal, if heeded will end the controversy and confusion surrounding the rejected or approved 2022 Budget presented to Parliament by the Finance Minister on November 17, 2021, on behalf of the President Akufo-Addo led Government.
The budget was first rejected and later approved respectively first by a Minority-dominated House and later a Majority-dominated Parliament.
There were subsequent challenges in the House with the decisions and entrenched positions of both sides.
These developments led to near confrontations between the Majority and the Minority members of the House.
It got to a crescendo when some members of the Minority group expressed their anger against the 1st Deputy Speaker, Joseph Osei Owusu, for making a ruling on a matter they thought should not have been ruled upon by him.
Sitting as Speaker when he returned from Dubai, Alban Bagbin also used the occasion to apologise to Ghanaians on behalf of Parliament for some of the excesses of the House which affronted the dignity of the Legislative institution while he was away on his medical trip.
He said, as the head of the institution of Parliament, he deemed it a duty to apologise for any misconduct which might have brought the image of the House into disrepute in the eyes of Ghanaians and the world at large.