By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Barely an hour after Messrs. Kwadwo Owusu-Afriyie and Hopeson Adorye were slapped with the hefty respective contempt-of-court fines of GHC 5,000 and GHC 2,000, the former New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament for Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa Constituency, in the Central Region, was widely reported to have picked up the tab by drawing a check of GHC 7,000 to settle the fine (See "P.C. Appiah-Ofori Settles SC Fines on [sic] Sir John, Adorye" Graphic.com,gh/Ghanaweb.com 8/14/13).
Now, that is a man who puts his money where his proverbial mouth is. And while I am quite overwhelmed by this kindly gesture, I am not the least bit surprised that the retired NPP-MP would literally step up to the plate and go to bat for the very party whose key parliamentary operatives have not treated him with exactly a decent deportment.
If I recall accurately, "P.C.," as he is affectionately known, expressed great frustration with the disrespectful treatment meted him by some NPP leaders in Parliament, vis-a-vis his committee postings, even years after he had climbed up to the top of the seniority ladder. On several occasions, PC had been literally shunned because his acute sense of patriotism and honesty had rendered him, in the eyes of many of his all-too-cynical colleagues, a very bad "team player" of the sort who would not condone or connive with the kind of unsavory political culture that engendered us such scandalous affairs as Woyome, GYEEDA and Judgment Debts.
And so when last year he left our National Assembly, PC had thoughtfully reached the conclusion that he would be better off speaking his mind on issues of moment concerning our collective destiny as a nation from the margins, as a private citizen and a statesman with a conscience. And that is precisely what he has been doing so far.
Needless to say, when Messrs. Owusu-Afriyie and Adorye were slapped with their respective fines by the Atuguba-presided Supreme Court panel hearing the Akufo-Addo/New Patriotic Party presidential petition, the measure was obviously meant to signal the fact that the Supreme Court, rather curiously, appears to be holding the leaders of the main opposition New Patriotic Party to higher moral standards than their counterparts among the ranks of the ruling National Democratic Congress. I personally find this state of affairs to be rather disturbing, in veiw of the fact that it is the key operatives of the so-called National Democratic Congress who clearly appear to have made a practised art of exhibiting unreserved and flagrant and public contempt for the entire membership of the Supreme Court, particularly Chief Justice Georgina T. Wood, who was even once conspicuously ignored during a State of the Nation Address by no less a personality than the extant president of our sovereign republic, Dr. John Evans Atta-Mills, of blessed memory.
Indeed, if leading New Patriotic Party operatives like Messrs. Owusu-Afriyie and Adorye appear to be relatively more vitriolic in their rhetorical or verbal attitude towards the Atuguba-presided court than their even more brash and brazen counterparts of the National Democratic Congress, it is definitely because the president of the court has not done nearly enough to disabuse the minds of those who firmly believe, with some modicum of forensic plausibility, that Justice Atuguba does not take kindly to the very notion of the petitioners saddling the highest court of the land, and in particular the presiding judge himself, with a matter that has in the past fallen far short of being grieved at such a high level of adjudicature.
For Mr. Appiah-Ofori, however, such generous gesture appears to have been tinged with the imperative need for the nation to be spared unnecessary distraction from the major judicial issue at stake. It has absolutely nothing to do with the personal stance of the retired parliamentarian on the matter. And so now the Supreme Court ought to reciprocate this kindly and progressive gesture by focusing its sedulous attention on the proverbial ball of its Election 2012 verdict.
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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
August 15, 2013
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
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