By William Madouk<\/p>\n
Members of the national Assembly on SPLM-IO ticket, under Dr. Riek Machar, on Friday, walked out during third reading of 2023-2024 fiscal year national budget.<\/p>\n
The opposition party legislator protested proposed 400 percent salary increment adopted by the majority SPLM party lawmakers, which they consider low.<\/p>\n
A controversy arose after minister of finance; Dr. Bak Barnaba Chol considered 400 percent increment for civil servants over a proposal of 600 percent, previously adopted by lawmakers.<\/p>\n
But the SPLM-IO Chief Whip, Farouk Gatkuoth, objected to the proposal of a 400 percent and threatened to boycott the sitting if the August House did not consider hi side.<\/p>\n
“Hon. Members, it has never happened in any way in the parliament of the world that when a budget or a bill is done within its first and second readings and then all of a sudden something comes from outside August House, be it from a minister or whoever, this is un-procedural,” Gatkouth protested.<\/p>\n
The opposition chief whip persisted, though defending that his insistence was not a threat.<\/p>\n
“I would be surprised that, in third reading, the SPLM-IO stood firm for the first report. I am not threatening, but any resistance to the first report might lead us to leave this House as an IO and whoever will follow us,” he added.<\/p>\n
However, as soon as the House conceded to the minister’s appeal, than members of the SPLM-IO rejected it and boycotted the sitting.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Aldo Ajou Deng, a member of the SPLM party blasted the opposition, which opposed the view of the coalition, not only to walk out of the parliament but also the Cabinet.<\/p>\n
“When you walk out of parliament, your own members of government should walk out of the cabinet. If you don\u2019t understand it, that is your problem,” said Ajou.<\/p>\n
According to him, there were no fundamental objections by those who walked out; if there had been fundamental protests, the walkout should have been against the government.<\/p>\n
“In the cabinet, people were there to work things out, and you cannot walk out from the tail of your party; the head is there, and you walk out from behind, and therefore we can pass this budget because we all agree,” Ajou insisted.<\/p>\n
It is worth noting that the extra-ordinary sitting went on and the August House passed the budget to the tune of SSP 1.8 trillion with a defect of SSP 200 billion, despite the SPLM-IO protest over the adopted 400 percent civil servant salary hike.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By William Madouk Members of the national Assembly on SPLM-IO ticket, under Dr. Riek Machar, on Friday, walked out during third reading of 2023-2024 fiscal year national budget. The opposition party legislator protested proposed 400 percent salary increment adopted by the majority SPLM party lawmakers, which they consider low. A[Read More…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/SPLM-IO.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16763"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16765,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16763\/revisions\/16765"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}