Parliament of Ghana; Quo vadis? – Prof. Mike Oquaye

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• KOKOLIKOKO 9 years ago

  Prof Mike Ocquaye, since when did you become aware of this emasculation of Parliament in Ghana? Is it now that your party, NPP, doesn't form the Executive, the arm of government that you believe is what is strangulating Parli ...
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  Prof Mike Ocquaye, since when did you become aware of this emasculation of Parliament in Ghana? Is it now that your party, NPP, doesn't form the Executive, the arm of government that you believe is what is strangulating Parliament? Or is it just a few years ago when your party, NPP, occupied the Executive and controlled Parliament? Back then, when your party controlled both the Executive and Parliament, and you, yourself, sat in both 'chambers' ubiquitously, we were served good, good doses of the very malady you're complaining about today!!! Back then, when you, yourself, belonged in both the Executive and Parliament most conveniently, we witnessed how the Executive in order to have its way did just the minimum with regard to constitutional demands!
  
  You are not, Prof Ocquaye, insinuating that it is the Black Stars' abysmal performance in Brazil and all its attendant jostlings about enquiry which have made the scales fall from your eyes and that's why you're seeing clearly and non-partisanly NOW? Alo?
  
  You seem to locate the 'cause' of the malady in the Constitution and, thus, call for amendment! I do share that same position that our Consitution is a dire need of amendment. Still, you seem to stretch the issue to a point of naivete! Constitutions hardly make man! That's, constitutions do not deterministically decide the policies and actions of Executive or Parliament. No matter how 'great' and 'effective' a constitution is framed, its ultimate force and power stems, largely, from the behaviour of its 'practitioners'! In other words, it's the very behaviour or actions of Parliament -- and the Executive and the Judiciary too -- that define and give weight to the provisions in the Constitution. It is man that make constitutions: not constitutions that make man! The emasculation of Ghanaian Parliament is, in the final analysis, more the making of the politicians themselves than it's the making of the Constitution. The separation of powers in the Constitution can be framed Aristotelian, intended America-esque, written in gold, and cast in concrete; still, it can be 'abused' or undermined by the actions of the politicians themselves!
  
  The devil, what you term the 'cause', is not in the Stars, rightly! Nor is it in the Constitution per se! It is in our political 'practitioners' -- a grouping that you, Mike Ocquaye, belongs in squarely and fittingly!
  
  The vulgar, nauseating politics being practised in both Parliament and the Executive is a reproduction of the very kind of politics that the political elite are practising in the polity as a whole! The seeming hijacking of Parliament by the Executive is a microcosm of the very hijacking of the 'democracy' by the political elite in the polity -- where they can easily buy votes into winning elections and lie their way into Parliament and the Executive!
  The seemingly 'corrupt' collusion between the Executive and the majority in Parliament so as for the former to have its way is itself a good reflection of the intensely partisan, winner-take-all politics that you, the poltical elite, are practising in the country!

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• Wiafe 9 years ago

  So Professor Mike, are you now waking up from your slumber? I totally agree with you--about the unequal executive power. But for 8 long years--you were a beneficiary of that system. Are you not being a hypocrite?

  So Professor Mike, are you now waking up from your slumber? I totally agree with you--about the unequal executive power. But for 8 long years--you were a beneficiary of that system. Are you not being a hypocrite?

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