These days, the main parliamentary opposition, the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC), appears to have resigned itself to playing the proverbial “Loyal Opposition” for the foreseeable future. This may pretty much explain the decision of the Bagbin-led posse of brazen pretenders to take President Kufuor to task for allegedly failing to inform the Speaker and members of Ghana’s National Assembly in the wake of Mr. Kufuor’s abruptly aborted official visit to the Dominion of Canada (see “President’s Whereabouts Revealed At Last” Ghanaweb.com 10/8/07).
The main reason cited by leading NDC-Member of Parliament Mr. Haruna Iddrisu for holding the President in contempt, appears not to hold water, as it were. According to Mr. Iddrisu, the President’s apparently unknown whereabouts for some seven, or so, days, comes in the wake of massive flooding of the Volta River and the considerable loss of Ghanaian lives in consequence.
If so, then the Tamale MP had better be reminded that the New Patriotic Party (NPP), unlike the National Democratic Congress, is not a “one-chairman,” or even one-party, government. And it is an elementary fact to recall for the benefit of the NDC malcontents that at the time of his most recent departure on trips that took him to London and the United Nations General Assembly, in New York, the President firmly had in place, a panoply of substantive Ministers of State charged with the collective responsibility of national governance, as clearly stipulated by the country’s Fourth Republican Constitution.
Secondly, it bears recalling the well-known fact of the President having paid a working tour of the flood-affected areas of the country prior to embarking on his trip abroad. And, perhaps, even more significant is the fact that not only did President Kufuor personally deliver relief items to the victims of the recent floods, but Mr. Kufuor also promptly declared a state-of-emergency vis-à-vis the affected areas, as well as issuing a plea for foreign assistance.
What is more, prominent members of the ruling New Patriotic Party, including aspiring presidential candidate Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo, have personally delivered substantial relief items to the victims of the recent floods. Interestingly also, even Professor John Evans Atta-Mills, the perennial presidential candidate of the National Democratic Congress, has joined hands with his ideological opponents in delivering material relief to the flood victims.
Even more to the point, President Kufuor, it is equally significant to observe, handed over the affairs of the country, as stipulated by the Fourth Republican Constitution, to Vice-President Aliu Mahama, a personality who is absolutely no stranger to Mr. Haruna Iddrisu. Thus, in threatening President Kufuor with a citation of contempt of Parliament, is Mr. Iddrisu calling the administrative competence of Ghana’s substantive Vice-President into question or what?
And on the preceding score must also be observed the stark fact of the NPP Government having an Interior Ministry in the charge of a Parliament-confirmed Minister of State, who is directly responsible for monitoring and managing such natural disasters as the raging floods in the northern-half of the country. And so what, really, is the problem of Mr. Haruna Iddrisu and his National Democratic Congress parliamentary cohorts?
Indeed, one does not have to go very far in order to arrive at the apt conclusion that the Bagbin Group has resorted to caviling the President and the ruling New Patriotic Party, largely because the NDC is bereft of any constructive electoral campaign agenda with which to creditably acquit itself before Ghanaian voters.
Of course, it is all well and good for the likes of Mr. Haruna Iddrisu to glibly quote Article 59 of Ghana’s Fourth Republican Constitution in order to hold the President in contempt of Parliament. After all, isn’t ours a liberal, democratic political culture of the sort that the NDC, during its two-decade tenure, found absolutely impossible to grant their fellow Ghanaian citizens?
In any case, I am just wondering exactly which Constitutional Article Mr. Haruna Iddrisu would be apt to cite in support of the numerous parliamentary boycotts undertaken by the NDC, even while the latter’s parliamentarians also demanded to be fully remunerated for criminally shirking their constitutional responsibilities to both their primary constituents and the nation at large.
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