By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
The decision by the three members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to prevail on a legitimately constituted court of the land to force New Patriotic Party (NPP) members in Ghana's parliament to officially recognize the presidency of the legally embattled Mr. John Dramani Mahama could not be more callow and politically absurd (See "Sam George, Others to Drag NPP to Supreme Court" Radioxyzonline.com/ Ghanaweb.com 2/26/13).
It is patently absurd because it comes on the heels of the filing of a petition by the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party before the Wood Supreme Court. In the main, the petition seeks to overturn the declaration of Mr. Mahama as the legitimately elected President of Ghana by the Electoral Commissioner, Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan. The Supreme Court has yet to determine the merit, or otherwise, of the Akufo-Addo-led petition; and so for the three NDC hacks to seek to so brazenly prejudice the Supreme Court is rather bizarre, to speak much less about the downright criminal.
The three NDC would-be-petitioners have been named as Messrs. Sam George, Sumaila Bielbiel and Spencer Quaye. What makes their quest rather risible is the fact that the entire leadership of the National Democratic Congress is globally infamous for both routinely disregarding rulings handed down by the highest court of the land.The National Democratic Congress, especially in its previous incarnation as the so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), has the unenviable track-record of causing the criminal abduction and summary execution of Ghanaian Supreme Court and High Court judges. And recently, Dr. Kwabena Adjei, the National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress, threatened to liquidate any members of the highest court of the land whose professional temperament and ideological orientation did not gibe with those of the National Democratic Congress.
And so, really, it is not clear precisely how the three would-be-petitioners intend to induce the NPP-MPs into publicly and officialy doing obeisance to President Mahama. You see, the problem facing Messrs. George, Bielbiel and Quaye is that while, indeed, Ghana's 1992 Republican Constitution clearly permitted the swearing in of Mr. Mahama by the Chief Justice at the time that the former's investiture occurred, the same Constitution also legitimizes the impugnation of the presidential legitimacy of Mr. Mahama by any Ghanaian citizen who has a forensically sustainable cause for doing so.
What the members, supporters and sympathizers of the National Democratic Congress ought to be made to appreciate in no uncertain terms, is the fact that the New Patriotic Party's Minority Members in Parliament were elected to their new privileged positions by their constituents to primarily serve the interests of their electors and those of the nation at large. And so, as long as the citizens who elected these NPP-MPs are satisfied with their performance thus far, it is absolutely not the business of any party or parties peeved by the admittedly disruptive, albeit strategically sound and effective, boycotting of parliamentary proceedings to determine the agenda and parliamentary duties of our subjects for the same.
Now, we may quibble over whether, indeed, in flatly refusing to take their marching orders from the politically blighted President Mahama, that these representatives of their people are in breach of national trust and/or the security of the nation. As far as I can tell, until the Supreme Court makes any such determination, as it is poised to doing in the offing, short of illegally causing harm to the person of either Mr. Mahama or his government by the unconstitutional application of violence or the unwarranted resort to arms, the question of whether the NPP-MPs reserve the right to or not to cooperate with the Mahama government vis-a-vis the diurnal performance of their parliamentary duties is beyond moot or absolutely not up for discussion.
This is precisely what he means when Mr. Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu, the New Patriotic Party's Parliamentary Minority Leader, calls for the tutoring of the newly-elected National Democratic Congerss parliamentarians on the fundamentals of the quite elaborate and nuanced culture of a parliamentary democracy.
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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
March 2, 2013
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