Age Does Not Matter Here, But...

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Garden City, New York

June 26, 2015

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

Most of her ardent critics are making an issue of her age - but at 22 years old, Ms. Francisca Oteng-Mensah is incontrovertibly a full-fledged adult by Ghanaian cultural standards (See "Sir John Attacks 22-Year-Old Francisca Oteng-Mensah" Kasapaonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 6/15/15). Besides, the caliber of our parliamentarians, parliamentary protocol and praxis, to-date, does not convince me that Ms. Oteng-Mensah would be playing way out of her leage, if the New Patriotic Party's newly-elected Candidate for Kwabre-East, in the Asante Region, gets elected to Parliament come December 2016.

My problem with her otherwise noble decision to gun for parliament, well before she is done with her legal studies at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, is that Ms. Oteng-Mensah does not seem to have clearly and definitively thought through the timing of the same. We know this, because the second-year KNUST law student has been widely quoted in the media to be saying that she is presently in the process of deciding whether to put her academic career on hold or combine the latter with her newly assumed political career, in the near-certain event of her clinching the Kwabre-East parliamentary seat. On the latter score, it is almost certain that Ms. Oteng-Mensah has been afforded the luxury of taking the leaden political mantle which she has decided to deck, mid-way through her college education, because there is more than ample precedence among the ranks of many a deputy cabinet appointee of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Maybe somebody far more mature and politically savvy ought to have sat her down and genially enlightened her about the fact that it is such half-hearted attitude towards the heavy-lifting business of politics that has functionally brought the Mahama government to a standstill. Indeed, the high level of corruption in the Mahama government can also be aptly envisaged to directly correlate with the abjectly poor caliber of cabinet appointees and their uncontrollable desperation to make a quick buck. Does anybody remember Ms. Victoria Hammah?

Well, unless she owns a private jet or helicopter, I don't see Ms. Oteng-Mensah being able to successfully negotiate the equally exacting responsibilities associated with being a parliamentarian and a college student in one piece. Maybe she needs to consider transferring from KNUST to Legon. But here, too, it clearly appears to me that Ms. Oteng-Mensah has been studiously taking lessons from the "double-dipping" NDC parliamentarians, largely absentee parliamentarians, who, in addtion to serving as full-time members of the House, also pretend to be serving as full-time cabinet or deputy cabinet appointees. In other words, it ought to be quite obvious to the newly-elected Kwabre-East parliamentary candidate that no matter how brilliant or adept at "multitasking" she may be, short of Divinity or Godhood, no human can sanely and efficiently wear two hats at the same time. Something has got to give!

We also understand that Ms. Oteng-Mensah's father is a prominent business mogul; we hope Mr. Oteng-Mensah did not mischievously decide to use his evidently politically ambivalent and tentative daughter to settle scores with his rivals and enemies. As for widespread outcry that Mr. Oteng-Mensah used his fat wallet to induce parliamentary-primary delegates to vote for his daughter, we find the entire proposition to be patently absurd. Which, of course, is not to say that it possibly could not have happened as alleged. What is relevant here is that each and every one of the candidates who competed against Ms. Oteng-Mensah went into the fray with full knowledge and awareness of the rules of engagement. We are also quite certain that if, indeed, Ms. Oteng-Mensah rode leisurely on the crest of her father's wealth to victory, she was definitely neither the first nor the only one to have "bribed" her way to victory.

Her one great crime, at least in the imagination of her most ardent critics, is that Ms. Oteng-Mensah spent more "bribe" money than her rivals. We strongly beg to differ on the latter count. For it is quite clear that 22-year-old Ms. Francisca Oteng-Mensah handily trounced her father's "classmates" at the polls because the incumbent Kwabre-East MP, Mr. Kofi Frimpong, had not performed to the expectations of his constituents. There clearly appears to have been the need for change in the minds of the delegates who voted for the pretty young woman. And so far, Ms. Oteng-Mensah seems to be preparing to bring about this well-needed change to Mampongteng, which we understand to be the district capital of Kwabre-East. She has promised to annually earmark three-month's salary for the promotion of the activities of both the main opposition New Patriotic Party and the well-being of her constituents.

Now, that is something worth thinking and talking about. This kind of healthy, progressive gesture has a name that most Ghanaian politicians seem to have virtually forgotten. It is called "sacrifice," in case the cross-partisan kleptocrats of Ghanaian politics did not know it.

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