By Clement | Parliamentary Desk, Accra
The Minority Caucus in Parliament on Wednesday temporarily walked out of the Chamber in protest against a ruling by the First Deputy Speaker, Hon. Bernard Ahiafor, during proceedings on oral questions to ministers.
The walkout followed the Deputy Speaker’s decision to disallow a supplementary question from Minority Leader, Hon. Alexander Kwamena Afenyo-Markin, to the Minister for Communication, Digital Technology, and Innovations regarding the government’s planned nationwide SIM card re-registration exercise.
Addressing a press conference shortly after the protest, Afenyo-Markin accused the First Deputy Speaker of consistently applying the Standing Orders in a manner that undermines the Minority’s constitutional oversight role.
“We have observed that the First Deputy Speaker has a way of using the rules to stampede parliamentary oversight,” the Minority Leader told journalists.
He alleged that Minority backbench Members have repeatedly been prevented from fully participating in proceedings whenever they seek to question government policies or decisions.
“Anytime our backbenchers have the opportunity to be on their feet, he uses the rules to frustrate them. The rules are not made to be used to intimidate or restrict Members,” he said.
The disagreement centred on a supplementary question the Minority Leader sought to ask after the Minister responsible for Communications responded to a question on the proposed SIM re-registration exercise.
According to Afenyo-Markin, his intended question sought clarification on the financial cost of the exercise, particularly after government indicated that subscribers would not bear any charges.
“This is a government policy seeking to undertake a fresh SIM registration exercise. They claim that some people used unverifiable identities to obtain SIM registration cards. Our question is: at what cost?” he said.
He argued that Parliament had a responsibility to ascertain the cost to the state, the number of fraudulent registrations identified, and whether due procurement and administrative processes had been followed.
The Minority Leader further maintained that his supplementary question was admissible under Parliament’s Standing Orders because it sought clarification on an answer already provided by the Minister.
“The rules under Order 89(1) allow a supplementary question to be anchored on an answer given by the Minister for the purpose of clarification,” he argued.
However, the First Deputy Speaker ruled that the proposed supplementary question was inadmissible, indicating that it introduced a new matter beyond the scope of the original question before the House. The ruling prevented the Minority Leader from proceeding with the question, prompting protests from the Minority benches before the caucus walked out of the Chamber.
Afenyo-Markin also claimed that some Members on the Majority side appeared uncomfortable with the ruling, although no formal challenge to the Chair’s decision was entertained during the sitting.
“As you observed, even his own side disagreed with him. The Majority Leader himself realized that what he was doing was wrong,” he alleged.
Despite the protest, the Minority Leader clarified that the walkout was intended solely to register the caucus’s displeasure with the Deputy Speaker’s handling of the matter and was not a boycott of parliamentary proceedings.
“We are going back into the Chamber to deal with other business. We protested his posture on this very matter, and that’s it,” he said.
The Minority subsequently returned to the Chamber and participated in the remaining business of the House.
The incident adds to recent tensions over the interpretation and application of Parliament’s Standing Orders, with both the Majority and Minority increasingly relying on procedural arguments during debates and question time. The latest disagreement underscores the continuing debate over the balance between maintaining order in the House and safeguarding Parliament’s oversight role.
Source: Parliamentnews360.com
