SC on Deputy Speaker vote: Why Minority group is disappointed - Haruna Iddrisu explains

The Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu has described the Supreme Court ruling as E-Levy induced, in order to give the ruling party in Parliament an undue advantage to approve the controversial Electronic Transfer Bill, 2021.

According to him, the ruling is a judicial interference in time-tested Parliamentary practice and established convention.

He said, “everywhere in the world, in civilised democracies including the United Kingdom, the presiding officer’s vote is discounted, so it is not for nothing that Article 102 provides that a person presiding shall have no original nor casting votes”.

At the Press Conference in Parliament to respond to the ruling in favour of the 1st and 2nd Deputy Speakers to vote while presiding, Mr. Iddrisu said, “The Supreme Court, to put it aptly, this ruling is judicial support for E-Levy, nothing more, for a struggling economy in distress and judicial support for the restoration of a matter that they have said is constitutional is repugnant to the provision of article 102 and 104”.

The Minority notes…, “when we regulate our own proceedings and today reference is only made to the 1992 Constitution, and not to the standing orders of the Parliament of Ghana, and in particular standing order 13, today as we speak, the Speaker is indisposed, there is a presiding person in the first deputy Speaker, so what would happen while the first deputy is presiding, there is no second Deputy Speaker, who will preside to supervise him voting for our purposes”.

He described the ruling as a travesty of Parliamentary justice and a stab in the growth and development of multi-party constitutional democracy build on the spirit and principle of checks and balances.