Charles Nii Teiko Tagoe, Executive Assistant & Head of Social Media at the Office of the President
Charles Nii Teiko Tagoe, Executive Assistant & Head of Social Media at the Office of the President, has spoken about the November 26, 2021 budget rejection vote in Parliament.
According to him, there was no grounds for members of the ruling New Patriotic Party to be blaming the Speaker of Parliament and Minority MPs for the incident.
He believes that the blame should lay at the doorstep of party executives whose actions and inactions caused the NPP to lose so many seats in Parliament and by that fail to have a clear majority in the House.
He posted his views on Facebook on November 27, 2021, read as follows: “Instead of blaming the speaker of parliament and the minority NDC, please blame your constituency chairmen, regional chairmen and some regional ministers who decided to campaign against their own parliamentary candidates because the preferred aspirants lost the parliamentary primaries.
“Blame those regional and national executive who overtly and covertly disqualified some parliament aspirants because they want their preferred aspirants to go opposed. Not only are we quick, but we take so much delight in bringing each other down.
“The brother against brother and pull him down in this government and party is simply unbelievable. The end results is the sorry state of the number of parliamentarians we have in Parliament of Ghana today.”
One comment to his post from an NPP member known as Hon. Premanii called him out for engaging in the very conduct he was criticizing.
Read the post calling out the presidential staffer below
Budget rejected, Majority reject ‘rejection’
A one-sided House (the Minority Caucus en bloc) on Friday, November 26, voted to reject the 2022 Budget presented before the house by Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta on November 17.
The Majority Group had earlier walked out of the House after a disagreement with the Speaker on his order to have all non-MPs to leave the floor of the house for a crucial voice vote.
The vote in question was to determine whether a request by the Finance Minister for Parliament to give him time to consult with the leadership of the house on aspects of the budget before the approval vote is held.
Bagbin later allowed the 137 Minority MPs to vote on the Minister’s prayer, which was rejected before they also voted en bloc to reject the 2022 budget as presented by Ofori-Atta.
The Majority in a later press conference accused the Speaker of engaging in unconstitutionality vowing to right the wrong that the Speaker and the Minority committed when the House reconvenes coming Tuesday.