We Have a Hung Parliament, NPP Leadership Must Get Real!

The New Patriotic Party’s skinny Parliamentary Majority should count itself extremely lucky that the sole Independent Member of Parliament (IMP), from Adansi-Fomena, has decided to caucus with them, after all the needless internecine hustle that he was put through by the members of his own party, who rather preferred to do dirty business with vindictive and self-serving local party bosses than wisely and proactively side with the popular will and the democratic mandate of the people. This continues to be the greatest handicap of the NPP leadership and one that they would do themselves and their supporters and the rest of the nation a lot of good to promptly come to terms with and rectify.

Thus far, the President and his lieutenants, especially in our National Assembly and the party’s Kokomlemle Headquarters, scandalously appear to be stuck in a fatal funk of denial. They had better wake up before it is too late in order to stem the still-rising tides of defeat (See “Akufo-Addo Jabs Bagbin, Others Over ‘No Majority in Parliament’ Comments” Ghanaweb.com 12/19/21). They may not like to envisage Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, the House’s National Democratic Congress’ Leader, as the effective Parliamentary Co-Leader, but that is precisely what the Tamale-South NDC-MP veritably is. And Ghanaians have the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to thank for such a Stygian horrid mess. The fact of the matter, and yours truly has had innumerable occasions to highlight the fact that the present parliamentary stalemate came about as a direct result of the flat and cavalier refusal of Nana Akufo-Addo to lead his own much-touted outcry in the battle against official corruption in the matter of the double-salary drawing ministerial and executive operatives of the previous John “European Airbus Payola” Dramani Mahama regime.

To be certain, had he promptly and meticulously stepped up to the proverbial plate and let the mighty waters of justice flow like the Volta River, Mr. Iddrisu, that is, the Tamale-South NDC-MP, would not be so imperiously jousting for the right to be named the Co-Majority Leader of Parliament, with the quite obvious and predictable complicity and, in fact, staunch and brazen support of Speaker Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin. And, by the way, Ghanaians also have Nana Akufo-Addo’s Minister for Parliamentary Affairs to thank for the reason why instead of being effectively and deservedly retired today, Mr. Bagbin finds himself comfortably seated in the scandalously oversized Magisterial Chair of the Speaker of the House, unwisely ceded to the retired Nadowli-Kaleo NDC-MP by Messrs. Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu and Dominic Nitiwul, the New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Bimbilla, in the Northern Region, who also presently doubles as the substantive Minister of Defense.

I have observed elsewhere in recent months that political operatives who cannot be trusted to defend the parliamentary integrity of the New Patriotic Party, that is, their own political establishment, can and should also not be expected to be able to staunchly and effectively defend the greater interests of our beloved nation at large. This is the kind of the No-Win Situation in which the ruling New Patriotic Party finds itself. And I bet my proverbial and metaphorical bottom-dollar that if the leadership of the National Democratic Congress promptly recovers from the egregious errors of its ways by fielding a more progressive, winsome and wholesome Presidential Candidate for the 2024 General Election, the leadership of the New Patriotic Party would have a stiff run for their money, as it were. You see, Ghanaians did not vote for Nana Akufo-Addo and the New Patriotic Party to merely improve upon the scandalous level of official corruption bequeathed the latter by the kleptocratic Mahama-led regime of the National Democratic Congress.

Which, of course, is to clearly imply that absolutely no Ghanaian leader has a right or even the privilege to cavalierly presume the uphill fight against official corruption to be one that s/he can pick and choose at will. Allowing the double-salary drawing Mahama cabinet appointees to escape judicial justice was an inexcusable crime against global Ghanaian humanity. It had absolutely nothing to do with compassionate leadership. In short, you are either a leader or a collaborator in the perennial scamming of the Ghanaian people by our criminally parasitic career politicians and brazen political opportunists. The NPP leaders had better wake up, sit up and stop behaving lamely as if all that Ghanaians care about are the resuscitation of the National Health Insurance Scheme and the Fee-Free Senior High School System. There is far more and better yet to a qualitative lifestyle than these two admittedly signal quality-of-life improvement markers. NPP leaders must be up and doing!

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

December 24, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]