Was the So-Called Sanctity of the EC Protected Under President Mahama?

It is not clear to this writer precisely what the official memorandum alleged to have been dispatched from the Presidency to the Jean Adukwei Mensa-headed Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) is really about, besides the apparent request to the latter institution’s Human Resources Director and, indeed, all Human Resources Directors of State Agencies, to submit the curricula vitae of all senior management staff appointees of these taxpayer-remunerated employees (See “Leave Office with the Sanctity of Our Electoral Commission Intact – Prof. Gyampo to Akufo-Addo” Modernghana.com 5/30/23).

It well appears to this author, however, that this demand or request may very well constitute part of the long overdue process of cleaning up the kind of institutionally regressive political patronage that has needlessly slowed down or completely hobbled the administrative efficiency of our civil and public service system or bureaucracy. Then also, it could very well be a follow-up to the recent widely publicized state of rank corruption and fiscal waste in the manner of our governance culture that was so admirably exposed by the Accountant-General’s Department, if memory serves yours truly accurately.

Even more significantly, such order, coming right on the heels of the very successful fiscal bailout deal recently struck with the Washington, DC-based International Monetary Fund (IMF), may very well be one of the several so-called CONDITIONALITIES contained in the agreement. On the latter count ought to be promptly underscored the fact that Prof. Ransford Yaw Gyampo, the pathologically loudmouthed and rambunctious latter-day agitprop goon for the country’s opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), has expressed his pet aversion over the rather timely decision by the Chief Administrators of the IMF to release the quite substantial sum of $ 3 billion fiscal bailout assistance over the course of some three years, a package that is likely to facilitate the speedy and positive turnaround of the country’s overdetermined and globally buffeted hitherto quite robust albeit fledgling economy. Now, what all this means is that the chances of the leadership of the National Democratic Congress assuming the democratic reins of governance come January 2025, continues to get dauntingly dimmer.

In his most recent tirade against The Fund, as the International Monetary Fund is also popularly known, Prof. Gyampo noted that, somehow, the Akufo-Addo Administration had been able to pass off a patently vacuous and bogus anticorruption agency that only exists in name in the country as a strategic means of hoodwinking the global governmental lender into releasing the much-needed bailout fund, much to the detriment of the chances of a National Democratic Congress’ return to power in the offing. The call for the curricula vitae of all senior management employees of state agencies might also have put the paymasters of Prof. Gyampo in the jitters, because it could very expose the long-entrenched politics of patronage that has constituted the modus operandi of the Mahama and The Mosquito Posse for some two decades now.

Obviously, this “Uber-for-Hire” Legon political scientist would rather have the country’s economy effectively go down the drain as the only surefire means of boosting the dismal chances of Candidate-General John “Gnassingbe” Dramani Mahama for a second nonconsecutive shot at the Presidency. Very likely, as well, this young and verbally incontinent Mahama tout has been promised a plum appointment in the highly unlikely event of Okogufuo Yagbonwura Kwame Gonja’s being inadvisably allowed by unsuspecting Ghanaian voters and citizens to revisit another drawn-out season of Dumsor and socioeconomic apocalypse on the country and our pates.

It is also inexcusably malicious for Prof. Gyampo to talk about the “Sanctity” of “Our Electoral Commission,” knowing perfectly well that the statutorily illegitimate process by which Mrs. Charlotte Osei, then Chairperson of the institutionally lateral or coordinate National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), was summarily and whimsically transferred to the recently Afari-Gyan-vacated Electoral Commission, as publicly advised against at the time by Prof. Kofi Abotsi, the renowned and distinguished legal scholar and academic administrator, did not absolutely in any way, whatsoever, redound to the purported “Sanctity” of the EC.

To be certain, it was not until Mrs. Jean Adukwei Mensa, unarguably Ghana’s finest and best qualified legal light ever appointed Head of the EC assumed the latter post that the EC acquired any remarkable semblance of “Sanctity” and independence. If the much younger Prof. Gyampo, relatively speaking, really wants to know about the veritable house-of-straw to which the cynical leadership of the National Democratic Congress had for some 20 years reduced the EC, the very proud Akuapem-Larteh and Fante-Akyemfo (or Saltpond) native had better revisit the globally embarrassing performance of Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, the late Chairman Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings-appointed first Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, before the Justice William Atuguba-presided panel of Supreme Court Judges in the matter of the then Candidate Akufo-Addo-led 2012 Presidential-Election.

In short, if the European Studies professor has nothing worthwhile or meaningful to contribute to the much-needed socioeconomic development of Ghana, he would be better off not making himself a pest to those who are determined to rescue the country from the morass of “WOYOMEISTIC” kleptocracy criminally bequeathed Ghanaians by the rag-tag Mills-Mahama-led regime of the so-called National Democratic Congress. Be smart and wise, young man!

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
May 30, 2023
E-mail: [email protected]