Mensah-Bonsu Should Not Defend the Indefensible

A Note of Regret: I hereby profoundly apologize to former President John Agyekum-Kufuor for a blunder that I committed in the preparation of my article captioned “Stop Picking on Vice-President Bawumia,” which appeared in the News Features column in the April 21, 2021 edition of Modernghana.com, in which I erroneously used the terminal adjective of “late” before the name of the former President.

I am more eager to know what a Parliamentary Service Board (PSB) does, first of all, before I decide to measure the relevance and significance of Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, the dynastic General-Secretary of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress’ recent appointment to the same (See “Alban Bagbin, Kyei Mensah-Bonsu Clash Again Over Asiedu-Nketia’s Appointment” Ghanaweb.com 3/30/21). Very likely, it all boils down to a question of money, that is, the infamous “sitting allowances,” a devious and scandalous and easy means of “legitimately” stealing from the Ghanaian taxpayer. After all, isn’t that what the kleptocratic leaders of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) have been known to do best?

What bothers me here, though, is the Minister for Parliamentary Affairs’ comment that although he is fully convinced that Speaker Alban SK Bagbin made an egregious judgment call by his patently ignoble decision to appoint General Mosquito, as the NDC’s General-Secretary is popularly known, to the Parliamentary Service Board, nevertheless, Mr. Mensah-Bonsu knows far better than to allow himself to be baited into vigorously challenging Speaker Bagbin and forcing the recently retired National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament to ethically and aptly back down. Why? Because, somehow, even a grossly incompetent Speaker of the House and his equally blighted portfolio ought to be protected as an integral part of the imperative need to protect the integrity of our National Assembly.

That may very well be all well and good in the thoroughgoing corrupt imagination and estimation of the Kumasi-Suame New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament. For his part, however, yours truly is not the least bit surprised because during the heat of the last parliamentary election cycle, which was the 2016 parliamentary election, Mr. Mensah-Bonsu vigorously campaigned for Speaker Bagbin, the extant MP for the Nadowli-Kaleo Constituency, in the Upper-West Region, on the decidedly puerile and chummy grounds that the seat of an experienced National Assembly fixture like this prolific boycotter of the people’s sacred business needed to be jealously guarded and protected. Once again, in this instance, it was squarely about the money.

And now, talking of money: Recently, Speaker Bagbin, who has been loudly decrying what he terms as the fiscal indiscipline of the Akufo-Addo Administration, took Jubilee House to task for daring to propose that a cap or spending limit be imposed on Parliament. For some reasons that were never quite clear to me, Jubilee House was widely reported to have promptly backpedaled. It is also quite interesting for a characteristically comical and frivolous Speaker Bagbin to assay a game of political equivalence by rather lamely suggesting that Mr. Hackman Owusu-Agyeman, at the time Chairman of the Council of Elders of the New Patriotic Party, had also been named to the Parliamentary Service Board.

Mr. Bagbin does not, however, inform his audience precisely who appointed Mr. Owusu-Agyeman to the PSB. In any event, unlike Mr. Asiedu-Nketia who routinely acts as the de facto Chief Administrator of the National Democratic Congress, the Chairman of the Council of Elders of the New Patriotic Party has never been known to be an administrative staff member or operative at the NPP’s National Headquarters, but Mr. Asiedu-Nketia does precisely just that, that is, the exact opposite. Which is why I am uncontrollably amused to hear Mr. Mensah-Bonsu, who claims to be well qualified to accede to the Presidency, (he is entitled to his own opinion, of course), also tell the general Ghanaian public that, somehow, he has a bounden obligation to protect a gross and scandalous political illegality.

He may very well recognize the eerie fact that drawing Mr. Asiedu-Nketia so intrusively into the affairs of Parliament may be clearly designed to ensure that the “skinny” New Patriotic Party’s Parliamentary Majority Leader is effectively neutralized over the course of the entire 8^th parliamentary term. Mr. Mensah-Bonsu had better studiously watch out. In the leadup to the 2016 Parliamentary Election, Mr. Asiedu-Nketia used his considerable clout in the NDC to forcibly snatch the seat of a legitimately elected incumbent from the Klottey-Korle Constituency, in Central-Accra, for the exclusive benefit of Dr. Ezanetor Agyeman-Rawlings, eldest daughter of the late former President Jerry John Rawlings. It is this piratical arm-twisting attitude of the man that may very well have inspired the strategically subversive decision of Speaker Bagbin to name The Mosquito to the Parliamentary Service Board.

In the Mosquito, we have a veritably bloody Socialist ideologue who fervidly perceives our neoliberal democratic culture to be the Number One Enemy of all that the National Democratic Congress’ “revolutionary goons” stand for and intransigently believe in. The Mensah-Bonsu Group in Parliament had better watch out!

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

April 10, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]