Minority ‘shamelessly sold out’ in ‘unholy compromise’ with Majority under ‘consensus-building smokescreen’– Amidu
The Minority Caucus in parliament, in the view of ex-special prosecutor Martin Amidu, “has now specialised in Orwellian doublespeak deceptions” and “shamelessly compromised” itself and “sold out on the rejected 2022 budget”.
In his latest article on the budget stalemate – rejection by a Minority Caucus-alone parliament and subsequent approval by a Majority Caucus-alone parliament – the former attorney general said: “It is now a matter of incontrovertible public knowledge that the Minority, instead of insisting on the submission, by the government, of a new 2022 budget, chose to enter an unholy compromise with the Majority and the Minister of Finance, under the smokescreen of consensus-building on the morning of 30 November 2021 to absent itself from the actual parliamentary sitting of 30 November 2021”.
This “compromise by the Minority with the Majority ‘to stand in it alone’”, according to Mr Amidu, “enabled the Majority to do with the parliamentary decision of 26 November 2021 rejecting the 2022 budget, as the Majority pleased”.
As “anticipated”, he noted, “the absence of the Minority emboldened the Majority to ‘stand in it alone’, rescind the decision to reject the 2022 budget on 26 November 2021, and to purport to approve the 2022 budget at the actual parliamentary sitting of 30 November 2021”.
Mr Amidu observed that the Majority “purported to rescind the rejected 2022 budget under Order 50 of the standing orders of parliament, which both the Minority and Majority knew could not be used to rescind the rejected 2022 budget”, however, the Minority “conveniently” and as a “compromised” group, “continues to remain silent over this substantive and procedural illegality”.