By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
The call by Mr. Sydney Casely-Hayford, the well-known and respected financial analyst and media operative, for President John Dramani Mahama to publicly explain himself in regard to the recent summary dismissal of his Deputy Communications Minister is dead on point (See "Mahama Must Explain Why He Sacked Vicky Hammah - Casely-Hayford" Citifmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 1/13/14).
It may be recalled that the subject in question, Ms. Victoria L. Hammah, was summarily dismissed from President Mahama's cabinet following the media-leakage of secretly audiotaped conversations between Ms. Hammah and a confidante, in which the former Deputy Communications Minister was heard claiming that the Supreme Court judges who presided over the 2012 Presidential Election Petition had been criminally prejudiced by the current Minister for Women, Children and Gender Protection, Mrs. Oye Lithur. Ms. Hammah had indicated in the publicly leaked and broadcast phone conversation, that Mrs. Lithur had met in camera with Justice William Atuguba and his other eight judicial associates on the Election 2012 Presidential Petition Panel immediately prior to the delivery of their landmark decision.
We must also promptly point out that Mrs. Lithur is the wife of Mr. Tony Lithur, the lead attorney who represented President Mahama in the Election 2012 Petition. It well appears that both couple have been generously rewarded for their widely perceived yeomanly job of guaranteeing the retention of Mr. Mahama in office, even when publicly available evidence clearly indicates that the sitting president did not quite clinch the electoral mandate stipulated by Ghana's 1992 Republican Constitution.
At a recent media forum hosted by Mr. Mahama, marking his first anniversary in office, the president rather brusquely and presumptuously asserted that he reserved the constitutional privilege, in his capacity as the highest-ranked elected government official, not to divulge his reason, or reasons, for dismissing Ms. Hammah, an alleged relative of his, from his cabinet. Mr. Casely-Hayford's call is squarely predicated on what my good friend - we have never personally met, by the way - terms as the imperative need to ensure gubernatorial "transparency" and democratic accountability in the country.
I personally agree with Mr. Casely-Hayford, but on a slightly different perspective. And that perspective regards the fact that as a presidential appointee, until her recent dismissal, Ms. Hammah's salary had been fully paid by the Ghanaian taxpayer. Add to the foregoing, the fact that the dismissed Deputy Communications Minister had to go through a deliberate parliamentary vetting process, and the imperative need for the President to more amply explain himself could not be more compelling.
In sum, our informed contention here is that Ghana's 1992 Fourth-Republican Constitution does not authorize Mr. Mahama to capriciously waste the taxpayer's money. Or select his cabinet appointees and remove them at whim, for that matter. Ghanaian voters and taxpayers deserve to be respected by President Mahama. And in this case, such respect ought to come in the form of an adequate public explanation regarding his apparently summary decision to fire Ms. Hammah.
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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Jan. 13, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
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