By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
August 13, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

He is constitutionally entitled to sue whomever he wants anytime he feels like it, but I strongly feel that Mr. Listowell Kusi-Poku has absolutely no right to attempt to compell the Accra Fast-Track High Court to force striking members of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) to pick up their overalls and stethoscopes and return to work, if the plaintiff is not equally prepared to sue the Mahama government to expeditiously settle the service conditions of these doctors with their leaders and representatives (See "Doctors' Strike: Hearing Against GMA Adjourned" TV3Network.com 8/13/15).

I have not read what our rag-tag, Indemnity Clause-hobbled 1992 Republican Constitution has to say on this matter, but in any functional democratic political culture, public and civil servants have a right to embark on an industrial action, if they are convinced of being unreasonably short-changed by their employer or the state. We are no longer in the slavo-coloniaI era. I am irritated because Mr. Kusi-Poku does not appear to have filed his suit in his capacity as a private citizen, but more as the General-Secretary of the United Front Party (UFP) or a political operative. If my assessment of his capacity has validity, then there is a patently unsavory edge to his suit. As an executive member of a marginal opposition party, his suit may very well be aimed at scoring cheap political points by unduly putting the UFP in the media spotlight.

The court has to recognize and accord Mr. Kusi-Poku the prime jack-booting that he promptly deserves. What is at issue here has a definite moral angle to it, but it is indisputably a matter of justice and fair play; and if the plaintiff is no manner either prepared or interested in seeing to it that justice is done to the doctors by the government, then he had better withdraw his suit pronto and not make a nuisance of himself by wasting everybody's time. We don't pay our judges to take on frivolous lawsuits. We also ought not to allow philosophical abstractions and theories fool us into thinking that our country is endowed with the high-end of qualitative healthcare services that our resources, appropriately appropriated, could afford us.

In other words, what I am clearly trying to suggest here is that patients are dying in morally unacceptable numbers not necessarily because our doctors have legitimately embarked on an industrial action, or downed their tools. This, of course, is in no way to discount the great difference that our public healthcare practitioners make in our lives. It goes without saying that more patients are dying by the second than they need to, literally speaking, primarily because the improvement of the country's healthcare system does not seem to be among the top-most priorities of the Mahama government.

Rather, President Mahama seems to far prefer spending the Ghanaian taxpayer's cedis on the veritable white-elephant that is the so-called National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) and its quixotic 40-Year Development Plan, than meet the far more significant and urgent obligation of ensuring that the average Ghanaian civil servant wakes up in the morning feeling sound and robust and ready to go to work and give off their best in our national development efforts.

Ghanaian courts are highly unpredictable when it comes to the commonsensical application of the law, as we all shockingly witnessed in the Charles Antwi Affair. Still, my own personal take on the matter is that no reputable judge would order the striking doctors back to work, until the government can demonstrate that it has been negotiating with the GMA leaders in good faith, and that it is the doctors who are unduly dragging out matters.

So far, President Mahama has only told the nation that the Flagstaff House is in absolutely no hurry to negotiate with the striking doctors because this is the very first time that the issue of service conditions for our doctor-trainees has come up for serious national discussion. It is this kind of cavalier executive attitude that the Fast-Track High Court judge assigned to the case ought to critically examine.

On August 26, instant, when Mr. Kusi-Poku's suit comes up for a hearing, the GMA leaders could ask for additional preparation time if they believe that Messrs. Dramani Mahama, Alexander Percival Segbefia and Haruna Iddrisu are mischievously playing a game of attrition or waiting out to wear down the striking doctors. Already, the President has told the nation that the doctors will not receive their paychecks for the month of August.

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