Busiest week for parliamentarians

Page 14, Nov 27, 2009
Story: Emmanuel Adu-Gyamerah

THIS week can be described as the most busiest week since Parliament reconvened for the Third Meeting of the First Session of the Fifth Parliament of the Fourth Republic.
Coming after the previous week, during which the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Dr Kwabena Duffuor presented the 2010 budget to the House, members braced themselves for the debate on the document after attending a post-budget workshop at Sogakope.
Some ministers also were invited to the House to answer questions posed to them by some MPs, while certain bills were also presented to the House for their first reading.
One of the bills was the Minerals and Mining (Amendment) Bill, 2009, which is to repeal Act 703, 2006 to ensure the collection of a flat rate royalty on minerals and mining commodities.
The second bill was the Customs and Excise (Duties and Other Taxes) (Amendment) (Number 2) Bill, 2009 to restore and rationalise import duty on selected commodities and to move from specific to advalorem excise duty rate.
Two other bills the Ghana Revenue Authority Bill and the Electronic Communications (Amendment) Bill were also laid before the House this week.
One memorable incident that occurred in the House during the week under review was the sudden power outage happened just when the First Deputy Speaker, Mr Doe Adjaho had invited the Minister of Energy, Mr Joseph Oteng-Adjei, who was in the House to answer some questions on activities of his ministry.
The incident compelled Mr Dayi to order the Business Committee of the House to schedule the minister to appear before the House with a statement to explain the current frequent power outages throughout the country.
Some of the questions, which were posed by the MPs also bordered on the frequent power outages in their constituencies.
Some of the questions also were to enquire from the minister, when certain communities in their constituencies would be connected to the national grid.
When the debate on the budget began on Wednesday, it was characterised with chaos and confusion and MPs from both sides heckled speakers from the opposing sides.
So rowdy was the situation that it became very difficult for the First Deputy Speaker, Mr Edward Doe Addo, to control the debate, since members from both sides of the House would not keep quiet for the listening public to make their informed judgement.
As usual, while the Minority contributors pointed out the inadequacies of the budget, the Majority Contributors extolled the positive sides of the document and accused the previous administration of leaving a run down economy, which the government was working hard to fix.
Prominent among the contributors were the New Patriotic Party (NPP) MP for Old Tafo, Dr Anthony Akoto Osei, who is also the Ranking Member on Finance and the MP for Anlo, Mr Clement Kofi Humado.
The Majority Leader, Mr Alban Bagbin averted an imminent boycott of the debate by the Minority when he prevailed on Mr Adjaho to order a Deputy Minister of Finance, Mr Fiifi Kwetey to withdraw statements he made which were deemed unparliamentary by the Minority.
Mr Kwetey told Mr Akoto Osei that he lacked the ability to understand his use of a metaphor to describe the 2008 economic growth achieved by the NPR as an athlete who had taken cocaine and steroids in order to aid him in a race.
That statement did not go down well with members from the Minority side and after a heated debate on the issue, which nearly resulted in a walkout by the Minority, Mr Kwetey withdrew his statement and apologised to Dr Akoto.