Round These Scam-Artists Up, Mr. President!

When Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, the National Democratic Congress’ Parliamentary Minority Leader, talks about the use of intimidation tactics against the scam-artist likes of Dr. Kwabena Donkor and Mr. John Jinapor, he so soon forgets that in the lead-up to the 2016 general election, it was a mob of thugs sponsored by the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) that fired several rounds of munitions into the compound of the Nima residence of then-Candidate Addo DankwaAkufo-Addo. The candidate was on the stumps in another part of the country, but his wife and present First Lady, Mrs. Rebecca Akufo-Addo, was in the house. It would take the direct intervention of the Nima police, stationed nearby, to force the NDC-sponsored thugs to cease fire.

Needless to say, it would be a complete waste of time, energy and ink, as well as paper, for me to attempt to detail the frequency and level of intimidation and atrocities that Ghanaians have had to endure under regimes of the National Democratic Congress since 2008. The reported early morning raiding of the residence of Dr. Kwabena Donkor, the custom-tailored Mahama Power Minister, was not in any way an arbitrary use of the coercive apparatus of the State to intimidate any prominent members of the erstwhile Mahama regime or any current member of the National Democratic Congress’ Parliamentary Minority. Indeed, it is, in fact, a complete misnomer for me to even call it a raid. What actually happened was a purposeful and legitimate search by police investigators, fully backed by a court-issued warrant (See “Dawn Raid on Dr. Donkor’s Residence ‘Dastard Invasion of Privacy’ – Minority” MyJoyOnline.com / Modernghana.com 7/25/17).

Mr. Iddrisu, one of the notorious scofflaws of the National Democratic Congress, would have the rest of the nation believe that the private and personal comfort of the NDC-MP for Pru-East, in the Brong-Ahafo Region, is more important than the right of the Ghanaian taxpayer to know just how fairly or otherwise the former Power Minister had conducted his/her affairs. And so Mr. Iddrisu and his rag-tag band of NDC Parliamentary Abongo Boys have concocted something called “Contempt of Parliament,” keyed into Article 22 of the country’s Fourth-Republican Constitution, which the rest of us mortals are supposed to interpret as indicting the police investigators who legally conducted the search of Dr. Donkor’s house in connection with his key role in the AMERI-Deal contractual scam that cost the Ghanaian taxpayer some $ 200 million in middleman sinecure to the Dubai-based energy brokerage company.

At the same time that Mr. Iddrisu is roundly condemning the Akufo-Addo Administration for the purported use of “crude intimidation tactics,” the Tamale-South’s NDC-MP also claims that the leadership of his party intends to fully cooperate with the government to get to the bottom of the full details of the AMERI Deal/Group’s contractual scam. So much for hot air. I am actually waiting to hear Mr. Iddrisufurther explain why the rest of us humans are supposed to agree with his veritably ratiocinative poppycock that, somehow, legally searching the residence of Donkor’s is tantamount to bringing the entire conduct of parliamentary activities to a screeching halt. In other words, what the Minority Leader is clearly saying here is that the people’s legitimate right to learn the truth about how their money was spent in the AMERI-Deal Scam implies the illegitimate dissolution of the legislative branch of our government. Come again, Mr. Iddrisu.

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