What Did Mahama Do to the Atta-Mills Constitution Review Commission Recommendations?

The more politically and megalomaniacally desperate he becomes, the more the Serial and the Dynastic Presidential Candidate of the late President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings-founded National Democratic Congress (NDC), Ghana’s main opposition political party, royally exposes himself for the charlatanic and the grossly incompetent career politician manqué that he veritably is. In his latest display of such grossly incompetent leadership, the former Arch-Lieutenant of the Palace-Assassinated President John Evans Atta-Mills would have Ghanaians facilely and rather obtusely believe that, somehow, the dastardly attempt by Speaker Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin to literally ride roughshod over the crystal clear constitutional diktat of Article 97 (1) (g) and (h) was, somehow, due to the exceptionally and conspicuously poor crafting of Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution, rather than the gross illiteracy and the strategic mischief of the infamous “Parliamentary Methuselah” to frankly and honestly interpret the same (See “Parliamentary impasse: Ghana's constitution needs review – Mahama” Modernghana.com 10/27/24).

As usual, the Bole-Bamboi native from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region has resorted to gratuitously and scandalously blaming the Torkornoo Supreme Court for the criminal attempt by the leadership of the Mahama and the Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia-led National Democratic Congress to literally and blatantly upend the Constitution by dastardly attempting what clearly and effectively amounted to a Parliamentary Coup-D’etat, by flagrantly invalidating the august House’s Membership of some Four Representatives belonging to the two major political parties, who had officially declared their intention to run for their seats as Independent Candidates in the watershed December 2024 General Election, but had not officially served out the full-term of their legitimately earned terms of reference in the current 8th Parliament.

Not very long ago, an irredeemably trounced Candidate Mahama demanded the immediate removal of the recently retired Chief Justice Kwesi Anin-Yeboah, and even on to virulently suggest the physical assault or maiming of the Nyinahin native from the heavily bauxite-laden township of the Asante Region, where a seismically defeated President Mahama had reportedly awarded a sweetheart or a backdoor mining concession to his younger half-brother, Mr. Ibrahim Mahama, without the requisite approval and had to be summarily revoked by a newly elected President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

This characteristically violent call for the physical harming of Chief Justice Anin-Yeboah came in the wake of Candidate Mahama’s epic loss of his Copycat 2020 Presidential-Election Petition, a patently bogus time and fiscal-resource wasting plaint which his own Star Witness in the Dock, Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, presently the National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress, publicly and categorically admitted had absolutely no merit and was decidedly Dead-On-Arrival - DOA - because it had absolutely no forensically sustainable evidence to back Candidate Mahama’s downright spurious claim that the 2020 Presidential Election had been deviously and deliberately rigged by the staff of the Jean Adukwei Mensa-Chaired Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), globally acclaimed to be Ghana’s most credible and professionally competent Electoral Commission’s Chair in both Ghana’s Fourth Republic and the entire postcolonial era at large.

Contrary to his predictably farcical contention, it was the National Democratic Congress-sponsored Speaker Bagbin, rather, who recently brought the entire country to the treasonous verge of a Constitutional Crisis, and not the Torkornoo Supreme Court that promptly and opportunely intervened to bring political sanity and stability out of the deliberately staged strategic chaos fomented by a National Democratic Congress’ leadership that clearly and eerily saw the proverbial Handwriting of Imminent Crushing Defeat all over the geopolitical landscape of the country.

The comedy here is that, somehow, the Mahama and the Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia Posse supposes that it could intimidate and bully its way to power by literally imposing its will on the overwhelming majority of Ghanaian citizens and voters, in much the same dastardly and morally reprehensible manner that the Satanic Pair had done to Dr. Kwabena Duffuor, the former Atta-Mills-appointed Finance Minister, in the runup to the party’s 2024 Presidential-Election Primary last year, in which Candidate Mahama was widely alleged to have spent at least GH¢ 100 million in plain bribe money, mischievously labeled as “Transportation Fares” for voting delegates. Maybe this was what Candidate Mahama was referring to in his keynote address to the celebrants at the 80th Anniversary of St. Joseph the Worker Church in Accra, Greater-Accra Region, just this past Sunday, October 27, when the infamous “Shit-Bomber” spoke about what the former Rawlings-appointed Communications Minister termed as “The imperative necessity to reviewing the Constitution,” in the highly unlikely event of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress’ being returned to Jubilee House or the Presidency in January 2025.

Now, for those of our readers who may have so soon forgotten this most intriguing story and readily verifiable fact of historical reality, Candidate Mahama inherited the comprehensive findings and the recommendations by the Prof. Albert K. Fiadjoe-Chaired blue-ribbon Constitution Review Commission, established by the late President John Evans Atta-Mills, his immediate successor, and chose to quietly shelf and do absolutely nothing by way of implementing those that were deemed to be practically relevant in fine-tuning some of the gaping legal and logical infelicities of the Supreme Governance Instrument of the Land. Instead, the twice-rejected, one-term former President chose to euphorically and publicly celebrated his “serendipitous” accession to the Presidency as the “First Postcolonial-Born Ghanaian President to be so named in the Fourth Republic.”

Which is why it comes as absolutely nothing short of plain insulting to the intelligence of the overwhelming majority of Ghanaian citizens and voters for a politically desperate Candidate Mahama to so facilely and scandalously suppose that he could fool Ghanaians this second time around. Now, hadn’t Okogufuo Yagbonwura Kwame Gonja also promised in the runup to the 2012 Presidential Election, that he intended to retrieve each and every pesewa and cedi squirreled out of our National Treasury by Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome? And also that he intended to put a definitive halt to the apocalyptic Menace of Galamsey? Come on, who are these National Democratic Congress’ freeloading Demolition Squad of the Kwame Nkrumah-established Ghana Industrial Holdings Corporation (GIHOC) trying to fool? And by the way, Mrs. Jean Adukwei Mensa, the current Chairperson of Ghana’s Independent Electoral Commission, was also a bona fide Member of the Prof. Fiadjoe-Chaired 2010 Constitution Review Commission (CRC). “Ghana Aye Dwe!”

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
Oct. 27, 2024
E-mail: okoampaahoofekwame@gmail.com

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