Jesus was not a corrupt terrorist, Mr. Bombande

I don’t know the rationale behind the decision by President John Dramani Mahama to appoint Mr. Emmanuel Habuka Bombande as Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister with scarcely four months before Election 2016

(See “I’m NDC, Jesus Christ Was a Social Democrat – Bombande” DailyGuideAfrica.com 7/23/16).

Chances are that it has everything to do with political expediency heavily tinged with raw tribalism.

The fact of the matter is that contrary to what he would like the members of the Parliamentary Appointments Committee and his sympathizers to believe, Jesus had absolutely nothing in common with the thoroughgoing corrupt and envy-afflicted terrorists who run the affairs of both the nation and the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC), respectively, from the Flagstaff House and the party’s Kokomlemle headquarters.

To be certain, unlike the founding patriarch of the NDC, Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, once nicknamed “Junior Jesus,” Jesus Christ of Nazareth and Bethlehem would never have accepted a bribe in the sum of $5 million from the leader of a neighboring country, knowing full well that such money belonged to the cash-strapped hardworking ordinary Nigerian taxpayer, and not from the private account or wallet of the theft-prone Gen. Sani Abacha, late.

But even more significantly, were Jesus to accept such grime-laden payola, he would definitely have promptly owned up to such stolen gift and not imperiously pooh-poohed those who tried to find out the truth of the matter, and then wait until twenty years later to publicly confess to such criminal complicity.

What is more, real “Social Democrats” do not school their own children in some of the most expensive tertiary academies abroad, while they deliberately, callously and unconscionably and systematically destroyed the ones at home, as Chairman Rawlings is widely known to have done. Rather, he would have set a patriotic example by facilitating the salutary upgrading of the colleges and universities at home and ensuring that his own children also attended these home-based academies with the rest of the children of other Ghanaian parents and citizens.

A Social Democrat would also not have taken receipt of the Ford Expedition payola the way that President Mahama is alleged to have done, by adding this veritable Trojan Gift Horse to the fleet of vehicles assigned by the State to privileged, rich and powerful politicians like himself.

Instead, he would have donated this purported gift to a charitable organization or institution, such as the Osu Children’s Home, to be used for the enhancement of the institutional beneficiary’s outreach programs.

Indeed, the performance records of the country’s two major political parties clearly indicate that were Jesus to land in Ghana on his much-heralded Second-Coming, he would be more likely to become a card-carrying member of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) than the ruling National Democratic Congress.

For like the key operatives of the New Patriotic Party, Jesus would have doggedly pursued such humanistic programs as the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and the School-Feeding Program, rather than callously seek to literally abandon these people-oriented social intervention programs, as the Mahama Posse has done.

And so it is rather ironic for Mr. Bombande to observe that Jesus had an avid penchant for improving the lives of the poor and destitute, without also honestly recognizing the fact that Jesus’ ideological beliefs and temperament made the Nazarite/Nazarene more of a perfect fit for NPP membership, and even leadership, than that of the NDC.

All in all, the general line of questioning of Mr. Bombande by the members of the Parliamentary Appointments Committee could have been better focused on matters of diplomacy and general sub-regional development and socioeconomic cooperation.

Instead, we had Mr. Bombande being forced to answer questions of more relevance to the portfolios of either the Minister of Defense or the Interior. Which left one wondering about whose professional competence needed more critical scrutiny, that is, that of the members of the Parliamentary Appointments Committee or that of the Deputy Foreign Minister-Designate.