Why NPP MPs had a quorum to pass E-levy - Afenyo-Markin explains

Parliament passes E-levy bill

Minority heads to Supreme Court to challenge passage

Akufo-Addo assents E-levy bill

Deputy Majority Leader, Alexander Kwamena Afenyo-Markin, has responded to claims by the minority NDC MPs that Parliament did not have 138 MPs to form

Read full articlea quorum to pass the Electronic Transfer Bill (E-levy).

The minority have in recent times cited the Supreme Court case ruling on the ‘Justice Abdullai versus The Attorney General” to denounce the passage of the e-levy as it maintains Parliament did not have the voting quorum threshold to pass it.

But responding to the position of the Minority on Joy News program, Newsfile, Afenyo-Markin insisted that the majority was not in breach of the law.

He contended that at the time of passing the E-levy bill, the total number of MPs was 274 contrary to 275 number.

This he said was because the Court had nullified the election of embattled Assin North MP, James Gyekye Quayson.

Thus, the number of to form quorum he stated could not have been 138 as the minority had trumpeting.

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“I don’t understand why they [Minority] think that by merely walking out they will ambush us and then we will lack a quorum. Granted that they are right, you know on that day because the decision on Quayson [embattled Assin North MP] had sufficed….Quayson was in the office but they [Minority] didn’t allow him to come in.

“They themselves told him that until the stay of the execution process is duly filed, [he shouldn’t enter the Chamber]. We were also monitoring Cape Coast.

“They themselves told him that don’t enter the chamber so he did not. At that point, the number [of MPs] was 274 because Quayson's election had been nullified. The number to take decision couldn’t have been 275,” Mr. Afenyo-Markin argued.

Parliament on March 29 passed the E-Levy bill amid a Minority walkout.

They later addressed a press conference at which Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, justified the walkout stating among others that it did not want to give the Majority a quorum for decision making.

Haruna Iddrisu and two other MPs have since filed a suit at the Supreme Court challenging the passage of the E-levy bill.