It well appears that having been caught for drawing double salaries, as MPs who also served as cabinet appointees under former President John Dramani Mahama, led by Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, the Tamale-South’s National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament, the operatives of the NDC Parliamentary Minority intend to use the recent ratification of the Enhanced Military and Security Cooperation Agreement (EMSCA) between Ghana and the United States as a diversionary tactic to draw attention away from this patent act of criminality.
Mr. Iddrisu was reported to have told a crowd of anti-EMSCA demonstrators in the Northern Regional Capital of Tamale that he and his parliamentary associates intended to force President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to live with dissent. This is rather absurd, because the Enhanced Military and Security Cooperation Agreement between Ghana and the United States was duly and legitimately deliberated upon by Parliament prior to being ratified in March. But perhaps what is more significant to highlight here is the arrogant attitude of the leaders of the opposition National Democratic Congress which, somehow, makes them think and believe that they have superior civil and inalienable constitutional right to signing strikingly similar agreements with the Americans, without submitting the details of the same to the elected representatives of the people.
It may be recalled that it recently came to light, for example, that in 1998 and, again, in 2000, then-President Jerry John Rawlings, the founding-father of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), signed two military cooperation agreements with the United States without the obligatory consultations with the relevant parliamentary leadership. And then in 2015, then-President John Dramani Mahama signed a similar military cooperation agreement in camera with the United States. Well, what makes the latter agreement even more damning is the fact that absolutely no physical record was kept by President Mahama and his extant Foreign Minister, Ms. Hanna Tetteh, who officially initialed the pact on behalf of the Government of Ghana.
One would have thought that it would have been the Defense Minister at the time who would have signed off on such momentous pact verging on the Sovereignty of the Democratic Republic of Ghana. Having attempted to flagrantly prevent President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the New Patriotic Party’s Parliamentary Majority from exercising their constitutional rights and failed miserably, Mr. Iddrisu and the NDC’s Parliamentary Minority have mischievously resorted to the use of pressure groups, such as the so-called Ghana First Patriotic Front, to force a post-facto abrogation of the EMSCA pact. This is inexcusably absurd because what Mr. Iddrisu, the Tamale-South’s NDC-MP and former Mahama Labor and Employment Minister, seems to be rudely and clearly telling Ghanaians is that Parliament has absolutely no legitimacy to carry out and on with the daily business of the Ghanaian electorate.
If the foregoing observation has validity, then Mr. Iddrisu must be fully prepared to be expelled from the august House. He had better make a definitive choice as a comfortably salaried Member of the House or be promptly and summarily shown the exit. Of course, the infamous plagiarist has a democratic right to civically and publicly express dissent, after all he is the leader of the NDC’s parliamentary opposition. But he has absolutely no right to mischievously and deliberately send confusing signals, undermining of the institutional integrity of the august House, to the Ghanaian people and to doing so in his official capacity as Ghana’s Parliamentary Minority Leader.
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