Opinion: Ken Agyapong Vindicated by Haruna Iddrisu – By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Mr Kennedy Ohene Agyapong

When recently Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, the New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Assin-Central, in the Central Region, told a radio or television program host – I forget which – that the caliber of the men in the august House, for the most part, left much to be desired, and that the conduct of some of these Members of Parliament had resulted in the unsavory cheapening of our National Assembly, the Parliamentary Chief Whip of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr. Mubarak Mohammed Muntaka, who also serves as the MP for Kumasi-Asawase, in the Asante Region, dragged Mr. Agyapong before the Parliamentary Privileges Committee for bringing the name, image and reputation of our august House of Representatives into abject disrepute. Mr. Muntaka also virulently accused Mr. Agyapong of maligning Mr. Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu, the Parliamentary Majority Leader, who also doubles as the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, by rudely and publicly remarking that were Ghana’s Parliament not insufferably cheap, the Kumasi-Suame NPP-MP would not have been elected by his peers as their Parliamentary Majority Leader.

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Well, in the case of the latter charge or accusation, Mr. Agyapong promptly and publicly acknowledged that, indeed, he had been caught up in the maelstrom of an egregious error in judgment when he made the decidedly unflattering remark attributed to him. Even more importantly, the proprietor of the Ken City Media Group publicly reported that he had already approached the leader of his own party in person and rendered his profound and unqualified apology to Mr. Mensah-Bonsu. As well, Mr. Agyapong noted that the latter had promptly and graciously accepted his apology. Nevertheless, Mr. Muntaka did not let matters rest there. Instead, the Asawase MP collected a tranche of some of the negative comments made about Parliament and the Parliamentary Majority Leader and forwarded the same to the members of the Parliamentary Privileges Committee (PPC). As of this writing, the PPC was widely reported by the country’s media to have recommended the suspension of Mr. Agyapong. I have yet to read about the details of the grievances upon which the PPC based its decision to have the firebrand and maverick politician cum businessman suspended from the august House.

It was with the foregoing report at the back of my mind – actually the front of my mind is more like it – when I chanced across a news article captioned “Haruna Iddrisu Accuses Ofori-Atta of Breaching Financial Law in Budget Presentation,” in which the Parliamentary Minority Leader, who also serves as the NDC’s MP for Tamale-South, accuses the Finance Minister, Mr. Kenneth Ofori-Atta, of breaching the financial law dealing with budget presentation. This is what real witch-hunting is about, because Mr. Iddrisu is also the leader of an NDC cabal in Parliament that has been doggedly seeking the globally renowned and respected economist and stock exchange pioneer impeached and removed from office. I am here, of course, alluding to the $ 2.25 Billion (USD) bond floated not quite long ago to facilitate the rapid development of the country, in the wake of the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party’s inheritance of a thoroughgoing bankrupt national treasury.

The Haruna Iddrisu Gang and some of their minions among the general population had earlier on petitioned the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to investigate the matter. Well, when they did not get the decision or verdict that they had been seeking from CHRAJ, these “revolutionary” goons decided to take their DOA case/battle to the highest court of the land. As of this writing, the Supreme Court was reported to have quashed a judgment rendered on the matter by CHRAJ against Mr. Ofori-Atta that the apex court found to have been misguided. In his most recent accusation against the Finance Minister, Mr. Iddrisu, whose Master of Sociology Degree was summarily revoked by the Academic Council of the University of Ghana, for flagrant exhibition of intellectual dishonesty and plagiarism some 10 years ago, accuses his self-avowed archnemesis of having flagrantly flouted Article 28 of the Public Financial Management Act, which states that each fiscal year, the Minister of Finance will prepare and submit to Parliament a mid-year fiscal policy review not later than July 31.

Now, the argument of the notorious clinical dullard is that Mr. Ofori-Atta grossly violated statutory law or the Constitution because the Finance Minister presented this year’s mid-year fiscal policy review to Parliament before July 31. You see, Mr. Ofori-Atta would only have been in breach of Article 28 of the Public Financial Management Act, if the Yale and Columbia-educated fiscal maven had presented his report on August 1st or later, not before or earlier. So where does Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong break any parliamentary rules bordering on decency and good conduct, when the Assin-Central NPP-MP rightly observes that most of the present cast of Fourth-Republican parliamentarians are so morally and intellectually bankrupt that they would be better off being employed as garbage collectors or sanitation workers (My profuse apologies) by the Jospong Group of Companies. Or are they called Zoomlion?

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com  Ghanaffairs

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