‘Bawumia reduces himself to an accompanying person’ - Haruna Iddrisu

Minority Leader in Parliament, Haruna Iddrisu has described Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia as a vice president who has reduced himself to someone who only accompanies the Finance Minister to Parliament.

He made this known while interacting with journalists after the 2021 budget presentation by the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori Atta in parliament.

Even though the vice president was absent at the budget reading in parliament Wednesday, October 28, 2020, Haruna Iddrisu said the Finance Minister’s entry has been made a ceremonial one because of Dr Bawumia’s usual company.

While lamenting what he described as the “pageantry that accompanies the delivery of the Minister’s statement”, he described the act as illegal and unconstitutional within the hierarchy of authority.

He said “…The pageantry that accompanies the delivery of the minister’s statement, you know sometimes he is accompanied by the vice president who reduces himself to an accompanying person to accompany the Minister of Finance to Parliament. That is not constitutionally acceptable within arrangement of government and hierarchy of authority.”

In an attempt to dissect the 2021 budget statement, Haruna Iddrisu further argued that in spite of the pageantry, Ken Ofori-Atta failed to deliver the true state of the economy to Ghanaians.

He argued that “conspicuously lost in his presentation is a report on the performance of the Ghanaian economy to give us the real state of the economy, including the performance of the first quarter, second quarter and third quarter”.

Adding that “we needed to have an appreciation of how revenue has fared with COVID and how revenue will fare tomorrow without COVID or with COVID. How has growth fared with COVID and how will growth fare?”