The Member of Parliament for Lawra Constituency in the Upper West Region, Bede Ziedeng has explained that the Minority Caucus in Parliament walked out during the passage of the Controversial E-levy because the Majority did not have the numbers to pass the Bill.
According to Mr. Ziedeng, during the Parliamentary sittings on that fateful day, the Minority caucus had a deficiency of one member who was to appear before a court in the Central Region, so having realised that they were down by a man and that the Majority Group was also down by a Member, they strategized towards that.
He explained that Adjoa Sarfo’s absence meant that, the Majority caucus could not meet the constitutional 138 quorum for voting in Parliament, so they decided to walk out so that the Majority Group would not have enough numbers to pass the bill.
“We went into Parliament and our leadership had to do a lot of consultation because, whatever it is, we are fighting on behalf of the party. You’re not fighting for yourself just as MPs. When we went into Parliament, the first deficit we had on our side was that the MP for Assin North was running a legal battle,” he stated.
He stressed that “at the point, the E-Levy was brought we realised we were 136 because Quayson was not available so our maximum will be 136 if everybody reported. On the NPP side, we had marked out Adjoa Sarfo so they had been cut down to 137 so you see that, they still had an advantage”.
He said that they were still monitoring to see if the court will be over within time so that their MP will be able to join them in Parliament but according to him, the Majority side deployed filibustering tactics to delay the MP from taking part in the voting to pass or reject the E-Levy.
According to the legislator “the fallback position was that, the Supreme Court had already ruled that the quorum to vote on a decision is 138, and so any decision that is taken with less than 138 members is a nullity, unconstitutional”.
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