How Many Staffers Did President Mahama Employ, Mr. Iddrisu?

The tired, old maxim says that: “Those who live in glass houses must not throw stones.” Actually, the maxim is not that insistent in its use of the imperative voice or tone. It goes more like the following: “Those who live in glass houses ought not to throw stones.” What is patently unjustifiable is the Parliamentary Minority Leader’s rather hypocritical attempt to use the Constitution to strongarm the Akufo-Addo Flagstaff House into submitting to Parliament, a comprehensive list of the number of persons employed by President Addo DankwaAkufo-Addo at the Flagstaff House (See “Gov’t Refusal to Provide List of Presidential Staffers Unjustifiable – Iddrisu” MyJoyOnline.com 1/14/18).

Mr. Haruna Iddrisu claims that the purpose of such request is to rein in unnecessary and wasteful budgetary spending. He also claims, without any substantive or specific evidence, that the current Presidency is bloated with people officially designated as “Presidential Staffers.” I don’t ever recall any specific moment in time when either Mr. Iddrisu or the Parliamentary Leader of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), then the ruling party, requested either of the Atta-Mills or Mahama Flagstaff House a comprehensive list of all staff appointees at the Presidency. And so it is quite interesting that virtually out of the blue, Mr. Iddrisu and the NDC’s Parliamentary Abongo Boys and Girls appear to have acquired a “decent” and “patriotic” knack for reining in official spending, particularly at the Presidency.

This poignantly reminds me of thattime when nobody at the Mahama Flagstaff House seemed to know whether Mr. Samuel George Nettey, the present NDC-MP for Ningo-Prampram, was a Presidential Staffer or not. This was shortly after Mr. Nettey, then one of the so-called Mahama communication team operatives, had reportedly rudely told the wheelchair-bound Presidential Candidate of the rump-Convention People’s Party (r-CPP), Mr. Greenstreet, that the latter was having a hard time seeing the great wonders being purportedly performed by Messrs. Mahama and Kwesi BekoeAmissah-Arthur all over the national landscape, because Mr. Greenstreet was too short and uncannily earthbound to do so. It was never clear how many Presidential Staffers were actually employed by the Mahama Flagstaff House. At one time, the figure bandied about was 600.

You see, the Tamale-South’s NDC-MP and former Mahama Labor and Employment Minister needs to be told upfront that there is precedent-setting protocol in these things. In other words, if Mr. Iddrisu could credibly back up his demand with evidence indicating that during the tandem and/or consecutive watches of Messrs. John Evans Atta-Mills and John Dramani Mahama, he had made a similar request of the Flagstaff House and been promptly and fully satisfied with a timely and comprehensive response to any such requests, as presently demanded, then we would really be getting somewhere as a fiscally responsible nation. Mr. Iddrisu also says that the creation of the Office of the Senior Minister, which is presently held by former Kufuor Sports and Finance Minister Mr. Yaw Osafo-Maafo, is not constitutionally provided for and is therefore unprecedented in our Fourth Republican political culture. Well, that is a blatant lie.

Needless to say, the Office of the Senior Minister existed under the Presidency of Mr. John Agyekum-Kufuor and was held for some 8 years by the latter’s distinguished brother-in-law, Mr. John Henry (JH) Mensah. What we thus clearly see here is an at once bizarre and dastardly attempt by the NDC apparatchiks to set up a different, lower and far less ambitious and innovative set of standards for President Akufo-Addo. This is nothing short of the inexcusably criminal and outrageous.At any rate, there may be issues pertaining to the security of both the nation and the Akufo-Addo Flagstaff House, and may very well lie outside the present vehement demands for the passage of a Freedom of Information (FoI) law.

At any rate, Mr. Iddrisu and his associates have an obligation to give the public their estimate of the number of staffers who ought to be employed at the Presidency, and in what capacities, before cavalierly presuming to put a fiscally responsible cap on the same. His kind of Kwaku Ananse demands will not wash here.

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