The Minority members in Parliament, according to a story we carried yesterday, are begging the Majority side to begin the process for approval of a mini budget for the first quarter of 2025.According to them (Minority), failure of the House to approve the expenditure in advance of appropriation from January to March 2025, before it dissolves, could have dire consequences, including the risk of public sector workers not being paid.
“And so, colleagues, I want to beg our brothers and sisters on the other side of the House. In 2016, when it happened to us, we came and we supported them to bring the vote on account, and so they should help us to also bring the vote on account so that we can pass it for the coming government,” Member of Parliament for Ho West, Emmanuel Kwasi Bedzrah, reportedly said on the floor.
The constitution states that there should be a vote on account approved by Parliament for the first quarter of the year after a general election. This is to give the new government the spending power, while it settles to prepare a comprehensive fiscal policy for the year. But with the Majority ‘dilly dallying’ with the process to present the budget, it appears danger lies ahead of the country as workers risk not being paid from January to March next year.
But as much as we sympathise with the minority, we think they have themselves to blame over the latest development. With this outgoing parliament being a hung one, the Minority themselves will attest to the fact that they have given their majority counterparts a hell of time. When the former Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, kept assuring Ghanaians that they would not go back to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout, he was banking all his hopes on the Electronic Transaction Levy (E-Levy) that was about to be introduced.
Surprisingly the National Democratic Congress (NDC) minority made a huge capital out of the new bill. When the bill was finally passed, the government could not achieve the target it set for itself in terms of revenue generation. This compelled the government to eat a humble pie and go back to the IMF.
Again, when the Supreme Court ruled that Speaker Bagbin had no power to sack Members who had taken the decision to contest the just ended general elections as independent candidates, the Minority went bonkers and refused to accept the ruling, insisting that they were rather the majority.
This back and forth argument affected the work of parliament, with the Majority failing to push through government policies and programmes before the December elections. Strangely, the Minority that refused to accept the Supreme Court ruling has made a sudden U-turn when the house resumed sitting. Though the Supreme Court ruling on the subject was very grotesque to us, the Minority members should have still respected it, but the opposite was what initially happened.
Interestingly the NDC have now won the general elections and are going to control what is being described as ‘super majority’ in parliament for the next four years. The flagbearer of the party, Mr John Dramani Mahama, is also going to head the executive, starting from January 7, 2025. Now realising that government workers will blame them should they fail to receive their January to March 2025 salaries, the Minority is now begging the Majority to bring the mini budget that will allow the Mahama government to spend in the first quarter of 2025.
This is a very fascinating development that should have brought to the fore the principles of the law of karma. But in our opinion, this principle when applied by the majority will not inure to the benefit of Ghanaians. This is the reason why The Chronicle is appealing to the Finance Minister, Dr Amin Adam, to do his utmost best to present the mini budget for discussion and subsequent approval by the House.
The Christmas holidays are just around the corner and should the finance minister fail to present the budget, it will, as we earlier indicated, have adverse effect on the national economy since workers are not going to be paid. Though the Minority members have indeed frustrated the government, this is not the payback time. The Majority should let voters take that decision.
