One thing, though, is quite certain – Ghana’s Fourth-Republican parliament may be the most overpaid, underemployed and pathologically sophomoric in the 54-year history of postcolonial sovereignty.
And just what parliamentary ‘arson’ and ‘arsonists’ are we talking about, but the Rawlings-chaperoned majority membership of the so-called National Democratic Congress. In the article, the NDC parliamentary majority are clinging to the throat and jugular of Mr. Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu, the parliamentary minority leader of the opposition New Patriotic Party. The clearly frivolous fracas is over the properly legitimate refusal of the Kumasi-Suame MP to escort President John Evans Atta-Mills from the august chambers of our National Assembly Building, after the President had delivered a State-of-the-Nation Address that almost everybody, except the NDC apparatchiks, of course, deemed to be the most divisive and diplomatically uncouth since the practice began in our beloved Ghana.
Needless to say, it was the first parliamentary address in living memory during whose delivery expressly invited members of the diplomatic corps, among them ambassadors from the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Veto Powers, had been totally and flagrantly ignored in the salutation. Ghana’s Chief Justice, seated immediately to the right-hand side of the President, would also be cavalierly ignored; it was almost as if in courteously responding to an express invitation from the Office of the Presidency, Mrs. Georgina Wood had brazenly committed high treason with her very presence.
Anyway, even more embarrassing was the adamant refusal of President Atta-Mills, a former University of Ghana associate professor of law, to acknowledge his immediate predecessor and former commander-in-chief of the Ghana Armed Forces, President John Agyekum-Kufuor, even after President Mills’ attention, in the quite legitimate form of signal-shouts from the gallery, had been emphatically brought to the significant fact of the presence of his immediate predecessor.
President Mills would later, to the even greater embarrassment of his fellow countrymen and women, shamelessly claim not to have heard the shouted signals indicating the corporeal presence of his immediate predecessor in the main gallery of the parliamentary chamber.
The President would also release a press statement claiming to have personally phoned former President Kufuor to render his apologies. He would also invite the latter to the old slave castle that continues to serve as the official residence of the president of democratic and Fourth-Republican Ghana, for what was then described as “frank talks” bordering on state security and the destiny of the nation at large.
For his part, Mr. Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu, the minority parliamentary leader, also claims to have personally phoned and apologized to President Atta-Mills, following the latter’s rather dubious assertion that he had, indeed, not recognized signal shouts alerting him to the corporeal parliamentary presence of his immediate predecessor; and also that he, President Mills, had promptly followed up with an apology to Mr. Kufuor.
Well, what we see here, predictably, is a cynical and perverse attempt by members of the NDC parliamentary majority to humiliate the leader of the NPP parliamentary minority. It is also rather ironic to hear Dr. J. S. Annan, the NDC-MP for Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abrem, threatening to haul Mr. Mensah-Bonsu before the parliamentary Privileges Committee for disciplinary action. Ironic because Dr. Annan’s seat once belonged to Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom, the Convention People’s Party (CPP) presidential candidate for Election 2008, and a former crossover cabinet member of the Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party (NPP). But as to what kind and level of “disciplinary action” the NDC pack of vigilantes wants the Privileges Committee to unleash against the parliamentary minority leader is unclear.
What is clear is the fact that this NDC brand of sycophancy has absolutely no place in the august National Assembly of Fourth-Republican Ghana. Even the hitherto retchingly servile Tarkwa-Atta has healthily turned the corner, thus the clinically rambunctious borderline behavior of the Swedru pontiff.
As for the Kumasi-Suame MP, all we can say is that, indeed, “Dignity is Most Befitting of the Royal Son of Asanteman!” A rather belated kudos, I hereby grant. For Mr. Mohammed Muntaka Mubarak, of Kumasi-Asawasi, all we have to say to you is this: “Better look before you leap!” And besides, haven’t our elders wittily observed that: “There was the eyebrow before there ever appeared the beard”?
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The Arrogance Of NDC MPs