Stoning women to death in Ghana?

By Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor

Friday, November 14, 2014

Folks, when we are looking for solutions to our country's systemic problems so living standards can be improved for Ghanaians to live their lives in decency and look forward to a bright future, our Parliament raises nothing but fiddlestick.

It can't offer anything sensible to help us. It hasn't been able to do so over the years and can't do so soon just because it is not made up of people who are genuinely interested in helping solve problems. The self-seekers that they are, whatever comes from them is flyblown.

Here is one clear example: “The Member of Parliament (MP) has proffered hanging or stoning to death as the best punishment for women who engage in adulterous acts. He said ‘Day in day out in Afghanistan, if you go behind your husband they hang you. So if they add that, we will get very genuine women in families.’

The MP for Daboya/Makarigu in the Northern region, Nelson Abudu Baani proposed this form of punishment while contributing to a debate on a Bill on Interstate Succession”. (Read the rest here: http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=334967)

MY COMMENTS

No Ghanaian wants anything from Afghanistan. No extremism will solve our problems. This MP is really sick in the head for even daring to make such a suggestion. He is a disgrace to his constituents and the country at large.

If the Bill is aimed at resolving the controversy surrounding intestate succession (implying that the fundamental focus is the widow who stands to lose under the workings of the existing Intestate Succession Act, 1985 (PNDC Law 111), why introduce extremism into it to the acute disadvantage of women?

And what has adultery got to do with intestate succession, especially if at the time of the husband's death the marriage hasn't been dissolved on the basis of that adultery? What about an illegitimate child born by the adulterous woman has anything to do with intestate succession, which focuses on the widow and not the children (in this case)?

Will the adulterous women be stoned to death as a way of depriving them any share in their deceased husbands' estate? Is that the solution to the intestate succession problem?

More seriously, why limit the punishment to only women/wives when husbands are known for their extra-marital sexual escapades or conjugal infidelity? What happens to adulterous men?

You see, folks, MPs of this sort are not fit to be in Parliament to participate in law-making processes/procedures because they lack the requisite knowledge about pertinent issues around which laws should be framed. What did his fellow MPs say about his fundamentalist stance? Or the female MPs too, who didn’t see anything damning about this male chauvinism to complain about?

Talking about adultery in this sense is irrelevant. What a Parliament Ghana has!!

I shall return…

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