Opinions of Tuesday, 20 August 2024

Columnist: Alex Kyeremeh

Pietism and fallacy are the armpit of Okudzeto Ablakwa

Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa

An honorable man who is blaring and raucous but junky is Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa. He is habituated to lying; he is in the abyss between the NPP and this country. He has the sole gravitation to awe the inhabitants with his contrived political agendas. Sometimes, he behaves to have the gift of the gab, but that is the will of the wisp. His albatross now is to mind his P's and Q's, or else he could be a bona fide bummer parliamentarian in the chronicle of our republic.

He is such a corking and spanking man, but his histrionic disposition is what butchers him. We all thought that, as a budding parliamentarian, he might propel propitious policies to aid the youths, not knowing that he was there to stomach the obnoxious missions assigned to him by his dejected party.

In fact, he hasn't been the pregnant tool we anticipated! For the past few days, I have perused through the plea he has yielded to the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) in the various gazettes and eveningers apropos the ambulance spare parts deal. Like it or lump it, we won't kowtow to his adrift rumpus and ruckus anymore. I do find myself in a nest of bumps as to why he has been earmarked as a parliamentarian, yet he lacks the credentials related to it. I was philosophical about his denseness until I realized that he has a fatalistic attitude towards his brainwashing, which ought to be blotted out of him. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, let me assist you with the edification of the regulation governing this ambulance spare parts saga.

Though the Ambulance Service was established in 2001 by the erstwhile President, John Agyekum Kufour, the formal and structural operations of the service began in 2004 without any legislative backing. I mean, a bill thus seeks to publicly fund the National Ambulance Service to provide a legal framework to specify standards, regulate operations, and disseminate the inappropriate use and operation of ambulances in the country that has not been authorized. Therefore, Parliament enacted the National Ambulance Service Bill of 2020, eventually regulating this agency. Clauses 28 to 30 of it deal with the finances of the service.

In Clause 28, provision is made for the funds of the service, which include money approved by Parliament, money from fees, loans, grants, donations, and gifts; reimbursement from the National Health Insurance Authority and other insurance companies; and money provided by the National Insurance Commission, established under the Insurance Act, 2006 (Act 724), among others.

From the above regulation, there are no ifs, ands, or buts that, in such a scene, undergo a parliamentary process and review before it is eventually approved. Although the primary function of parliamentarians is to make laws under Article 93(2) of our Constitution, parliament also has financial control over the country's budgets and expenditures. It was unparliamentary and puerile to have expressed that Hon Ken Ofori-Atta approved a particular amount within his latitude. How farcical and implausible it is.

Per your act, you have cast an indictment on the Speaker, whom you are politically coupled with, such that he is supine to spearhead parliamentary affairs since he is at the helm of these things. On the same side of the coin, you have also undermined and calumniated the adroitness of your parliamentary confrères. Your la-ddi-dda manners and chi-chi pansophicals are wrecking your identity gradually.

Every Ghanaian is acquainted with the fact that, on January 28, 2019, the President, Nana Akufo-Addo, commissioned and presented three hundred and seven (307) state-of-the-art ambulances to the National Ambulance Service. This index demonstrates that any budgetary amount endorsed by our adept Parliament in the procurement of these items has been fulfilled. Hon. Ken Ofori-Atta didn't mushroom the amount licensed by Parliament either in the process or the latter part of this exercise or when he was on the verge of being vacated from his Parliamentary role, so you have to accept it, warts and all.

I venerate anyone who is a proponent of anti-corruption. But Ablakwa's own is instigated under the auspices of his partisanship. As a supposed anti-corruption performer, you must be holistic and consistent. Mr. Ablakwa, I hope you read and heard on this same issue (the ambulance acquisitions) that, in December 2015, when your party was in power, two hundred ambulances were supposedly purchased by your party led by John Mahama, out of which only thirty arrived in the country, and even regarding the said thirty ambulances, they were declared not fit for purpose because they had cardinal defects and did not come with any medical equipment. What investigatory and criminal steps have you taken to apprehend your flagbearer, John Mahama?

When it pertains to your party, you keep mum on it and act with sanctimoniousness. Do you think Kissi Agyebeng, Esq., is credulous and that you can thrust your lies on him for execution? Then you might be in the rancid realm of your dream. He is an astute legal practitioner and won't be fragile to your craft.

However, the petition you have tendered to the Office of the Special Prosecutor is frivolous because Hon. Ken Ofori-Atta is the toast of our partisan political regime, and as a result, he wouldn't taint his probity with any Janus-faced transactions!