DEPUTY Prime Minister Manasseh Maelanga had warned the Member of Parliament for Aoke Langalanga, Mathew Wale to refrain from using God’s name in his speeches during debates on the floor of Parliament.
Mr Maelanga said the use of God’s name during debates amounts to abuse of the divine ruler in the form of a joke and must be rebuked by professed Christians.
The Deputy Prime Minister lashed out against Mr Wale for complementing God’s name during the second reading debate on the supplementary Appropriation B ill 2015 in Parliament.
Mr Maelanga raised a point of order asking Mr Wale to refrain from quoting Bible Scriptures while giving speeches in Parliament.
Speaker of Parliament Ajilon Jasper Nasiu had allowed Mr Maelanga to intervene by raising a point of order objecting to the use of God’s holy name during parliamentary debates.
Mr Maelanga cautioned Mr Wale to avoid quoting Bible scriptures and direct his debates strictly focused on the contents of the Supplementary Appropriation Bill 2015 under debate in the House.
Mr Maelanga said he felt embarrassed at seeing Mr Wale laughing while he was using quotes from the Bible during his debate speech in Parliament.
He warned Mr Wale to be fearful pointing out that God’s word is a double edge sword, thus it must not be used in vain during parliamentary debates.
However, Mr Wale insisted, the Deputy Prime Minister had misunderstood the point he was trying to hammer home in his speech.
“My starting of the debate was not meant to use God’s name as a joke. In actual fact I was trying to relate the Budget under discussion to what the Bible had to say about such monetary wealth,” he said.
Mr Wale said it has been a trend over time that every budget brought into Parliament had seen the same scenario of continued repetitions about Government failures.
Mr Wale pointed out that the use of the contingency warrant for example was unconstitutional because the activities and functions for which government spent money on were not unforeseen.
“They were events focused in advance thus any budgetary shortfalls can only amount to poor management of the budget.”
But in his wind up debate speech on the second reading of the Bill Minister of Finance and Treasury Snyder Rini rejected as totally incorrect the norm held by some parliamentarians that the use of a contingency warrant as unconstitutional.
He explained why government had to use contingency warrant to fund the Melanesian Spearhead Group meeting in Honiara and contingents to the recent Pacific games held in Port Moresby PNG.
He said Government had resorted to a contingency warrant fund the important events since no budgetary provisions were formulated and allocated to meet costs of the events in the 2015 National Budget.
By ELLIOT DAWEA