Just three days ago we witnessed the rejection by the Parliament of the NPP government’s budget presented by the finance minister.
After the rejection, many on the NPP side have claimed the said rejection is illegal.
Due to this, it is feared that they may want to push through an agenda that ensures the approval of the budget in the absence of the speaker who currently is out of the jurisdiction for medical reasons.
With Parliament equally balanced with NDC having 137 MPs same as NPP it is interesting to note how the NPP can push through the budget with a supposed majority that they claim to have or would marshall.
One theory, although farfetched, has been postulated asserting that NPP would allow its speaker Joe Wise or the independent MP to vote even though Joe Wise would be presiding.
I’ll be honest and straightforward in saying that this write-up is purely from the common sense approach and not from the legal point.
My understanding is that the speakership position is neutral. A Member of Parliament cannot play the role of speaker that’s why the person chosen to be the speaker should not be an MP. This is to ensure neutrality just like the referee of a football game. The referee cannot be a player from one of the teams on the football field.
Thus in this same vein, anyone who stands in the stead of the speaker when he is not around should lose the cloth he wears as a party to be able to preside. That’s why the deputy speaker or second deputy speaker loses his vote when he presides on activities in Parliament as the speaker.
For this reason, it’ll be illegal for any of the deputy speakers who preside as a speaker tomorrow in Parliament to claim to have either an original vote or a casting vote. He loses his original vote as an MP once he takes on the responsibility of the speaker and no amount of legal interpretation or gymnastics can support this.
Some claim that the Akuffo Addo government thrives on legal confusion to have its way. Even if true, it still cannot be the situation that the speaker presiding should vote.
If that happens, it would be such a bad precedent that this principle of neutrality would have been destroyed giving any party in power to do the same or even extend it to many different ways just to also have its way.
This would in turn, and at the appropriate time cause the same behavior to be unleashed on the other side too. This should never be allowed to happen.
Anyone who presides as a speaker loses his vote and cannot vote under any circumstances. It’s as simple as that.
And that is already the position of the law that must not be violated.
Source: Mybrytfmonline.com/Article by Isaac M. Larbi, Esq
