Letter from the president: A slap in parliament?

What will make an MP slap his colleague from the same party? And on the floor of parliament? Countrymen and women, loyalists and opponents, those are the question many in Sikaman have been asking since news broke out a few days ago that an NDC MP had dealt his fellow lawmaker a hefty slap – in parliament. The incident provided with me some comic relief because… well, it was funny! I’ve seen pictures of MPs in places like Kenya and India hurling missiles at each other. Never thought anything of the sort will happen here under my watch. But it sure happened last week and gave me some food for thought. For example, I thought that if a Sikaman MPs ever decided to get violent with each other, I expected the ‘slapper’ (the giver of the slap) and the ‘slappee’ (the one at the receiving end) to be from different parties. But in Sikaman, sometimes, strange things happen, and so it happened that the slapper and the slappee are from the same party.

What will make an MP slap his colleague from the same party? And on the floor of parliament? Countrymen and women, loyalists and opponents, those are the question many in Sikaman have been asking since news broke out a few days ago that an NDC MP had dealt his fellow lawmaker a hefty slap – in parliament. The incident provided with me some comic relief because… well, it was funny! I’ve seen pictures of MPs in places like Kenya and India hurling missiles at each other. Never thought anything of the sort will happen here under my watch. But it sure happened last week and gave me some food for thought. For example, I thought that if a Sikaman MPs ever decided to get violent with each other, I expected the ‘slapper’ (the giver of the slap) and the ‘slappee’ (the one at the receiving end) to be from different parties. But in Sikaman, sometimes, strange things happen, and so it happened that the slapper and the slappee are from the same party.